550.S1/1195½
The British Prime Minister (MacDonald) to President Roosevelt 16a
My Dear President Roosevelt: I was very happy indeed to have your message16b just before the International Conference adjourned and, quite apart from its personal gratification, it did a great deal to [Page 748] secure a finish that was not at all unhopeful. Although the end gave our enemies great cause for sneering and blaspheming, the spirit of helpfulness, which was so manifest after the first day of pessimism was over, and which drove the Conference at a pace I have never known an international conference to show, lasted right to the end; and as soon as I have had a few more days for recuperation here I am going to take the work up again from where it was left off.
You will have had full reports from Mr. Cordell Hull and Governor Cox, so I need not try to add anything to what you know. If we could come to an agreement on the new conditions of things before much is done to continue the work of the Conference, it would be a great gain, as I am as opposed as ever to a mere European bloc. In the course of this month perhaps the outlook of the United States will be a bit clearer, and it will be more possible to come to certain understandings which will prevent a rigid attitude of the gold bloc stopping big international agreements. If we cannot open out a way for the latter, we shall have to face a world economic war, which will do more damage to human idealism and international peace than the late conflict fought out on battlefields.
I am up here once more in my own home and amongst my own people. I hope that Mrs. Roosevelt and you keep fit to face the great struggle in which you are engaged, and that, so far as it has gone, it increases the good heart in which you entered it. Ishbel16c does not come up until the end of the month, or she would join me in sending very best wishes.
Yours most sincerely,
[P. S.] You will see that Hitlerism in Germany is causing us some concern.