Hopkins Papers

Memorandum by the President’s Special Assistant (Hopkins)

The last evening of Churchill’s visit (January 14) the President, Churchill and I had dinner together.

During dinner we wound up the last details of the agreements relative to shipping,1 raw materials and the allocation board.2 It was agreed that the text of these would not be given out but at the appropriate time the President would release a general statement governing all of them. The President and Churchill initialed the several documents.3

The President and Churchill reviewed together the work of the past three weeks and Churchill expressed not only his warm appreciation of the way he and his associates had been treated but his confidence that great steps had been taken towards unification of the prosecution of the war.

Churchill had not decided even then whether to fly from Bermuda or to go in a battleship. The President did not know until later that Churchill had actually flown to England.

They were supposed to leave at 8:45 but it was a quarter of ten before we got up from dinner and the President and I drove with Churchill to his train to Norfolk, Virginia. A special train had been put on the siding at Sixth Street.

The President said goodbye to Churchill in the car and I walked with him and put him on the train and said goodbye to him, Pound and Portal.

On the way back, the President made it perfectly clear that he too was very pleased with the meetings. There was no question but that he grew genuinely to like Churchill and I am sure Churchill equally liked the President.

Harry L. Hopkins
  1. Certain additional information about arrangements worked out at the First Washington Conference for Anglo-American cooperation in merchant shipping was included in a letter of May 28, 1943, from Roosevelt to Churchill. The text of this letter is scheduled for publication in a subsequent volume of this series including documentation on the Third Washington, or Trident, Conference of May 1943. A slightly abbreviated text of the letter was read by Churchill to the House of Commons on August 3, 1943 (Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 5th series, vol. 391, col. 2088).
  2. Post, pp. 360 and 361.
  3. See the editorial note, post, p. 359.