Editorial Note
No official record of the substance of the discussion at this meeting has been found. The brief accounts in Hopkins’ notes of January 24, post, p. 839, and in Pendar, Adventure in Diplomacy, p. 152, agree that the meeting was given over to the final revision of the joint messages from Roosevelt and Churchill to Stalin and Chiang. In information supplied to the Historical Office, Harriman recalls that the one significant piece of business during the Conference of which he had personal recollection related to this particular meeting: “In the course of that evening, Hopkins prepared, with some suggestions from me, drafts of joint messages from the President and Churchill which were to be sent to Marshal Stalin and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, informing them of the substance of their talks at Casablanca. The President and Churchill made some changes in the text thus prepared and the messages were sent off.” Pendar’s account describes the unusual circumstances in which the revision of the documents was carried out. Hopkins’ account fixes the conclusion of the meeting at 2 a.m. on January 25, while Pendar recalls that the documents were not in final order until 3:30 a.m. For the final texts of the two messages, see post, pp. 805 and 807, respectively. It is also probable that at this meeting Roosevelt and Churchill concluded the drafting of their letter of January 25, 1943, to the United States and British Chiefs of Staff, post, p. 808.