Editorial Note
No official record of the substance of the conversation at this dinner has been found. The information set forth above is derived from the Log, ante, p. 531, which adds that the Sultan and his party left at 10:10 p.m. followed shortly thereafter by Churchill, Noguès, and Patton. Hopkins’ informal notes of the proceedings of January 22 (Sherwood, pp. 687–690) include a brief description of this dinner. McCrea’s copy of the President’s own sketch of the seating arrangement as corrected by McCrea is reproduced in Sherwood, p. 971. According to the account of the dinner by Elliott Roosevelt (pp. 109–112), the conversation ranged over the problems of Morocco’s post-war economic development, the possibilities of American participation in Moroccan development programs, and the colonial question as it applied to Morocco. Pendar (p. 145) recalls that the President later described the dinner to him and spoke of the distress of Noguès at not being able to hear the President’s conversation with the Sultan. According to Murphy, p. 173, the President expressed to the Sultan his sympathy with Morocco’s aspirations for independence and spoke of possible American-Moroccan economic cooperation after the war. At his press conference on the morning of February 2, 1943, following his return to Washington on January 31, the President added the following information regarding his meeting with the Sultan: “We had a grand visit from the Sultan of Morocco, his Grand Vizier, his Chief of Protocol, and the Crown Prince. And the Sultan said—I told him I hoped he would come to Washington and see us all; and he said he would, he was going to try to do it just as soon as the war was over.” (Roosevelt Papers)