Editorial Note
The information given above regarding the time and place of the meeting and the guest list is taken from the Stimson diary. The dinner, for which Churchill was host, was not an official meeting and no official record was made of the discussion. The conversation, however, did touch on certain aspects of official business, as indicated by the following extract from Stimson’s diary:
“We had a very good dinner and a very interesting talk afterwards. Churchill told us a very interesting account of his experiences just after he had been made Prime Minister when he was trying to rally the [Page 196] French nation into continuing the war by going over to North Africa and his conferences with the leaders of France at that time. The talk drifted into a discussion of our strategic plans, Knox taking the lead with his usual vigor and lack of caution. He started out with an attack on the proposal to go ahead with the Far Eastern war in which he very evidently had the support of Beaverbrook. Churchill was, however, evidently on the other side and I put in a few remarks to show why such action in the Far East was absolutely necessary and how it need not interfere with the other main theatres of the war, provided only that the Navy would do its part with carriers. Then they drifted over onto the Super-Gymnast proposition where Churchill joined Knox in being very earnest for immediate action. Donovan also pitched in on that side. Again I had to put in a few words of caution, pointing out how thoroughly the matter had been studied by the War Department and some of the difficulties which that would be.”
Hull (vol. ii, p. 1153) indicates that he discussed the question of imperial tariff preferences and lend-lease with Churchill “while sitting beside him at a dinner at the White House on January 12.” Since there is no evidence that Hull was at the White House for lunch on January 12, the conversation to which Hull refers presumably took place during the dinner at the British Embassy. In an entry dated January 13, Long’s diary notes that Churchill had given “the official bludgeoning” to Hull’s plans for “political recrudescence through trade agreements”, which Long described as the cornerstone of Hull’s entire foreign policy. Long stated that at the Embassy dinner Churchill definitely refused to accept Hull’s proposal to include in the contract for “our compensation for Lend-Lease the agreement to discard the Empire tariff and trade program.” (The War Diary of Breckinridge Long, p. 242).
Also with reference to the dinner at the British Embassy, Morgenthau on January 13 described to a meeting of Treasury officials and others, including Hornbeck, recent developments relating to proposed financial assistance to China, including a long conversation of the previous evening with Halifax and then Churchill about possible direct payments to Chinese troops. For the text of Hornbeck’s memorandum describing the meeting at the Treasury, see Foreign Relations, 1942, China, p. 438, and for related documentation, see ibid., pp. 419 ff. John Morton Blum, From the Morgenthau Diaries: Tears of War, 1941–1943 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1967), pp. 92–93, gives a parallel account which includes the statement that Morgenthau told Churchill that in the absence of significant aid Chiang Kai-shek might move closer to the Japanese and others of the “yellow races.”