Hopkins Papers: Telegram
The British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Eden) to Prime Minister Churchill 1
[London,] January 20, 1943.
Tel No: 162. Am doing my utmost. I am having a final interview with General de Gaulle in two hours and will telegraph immediately after it.2 Text as modified by Cabinet and delivered to de Gaulle follows in my immediately following telegram.3
- Sent to Hopkins under cover of a note from Churchill’s private secretary, Rowan, dated January 20, and reading as follows: “The Air Commodore has asked me to send this round immediately for the information of Admiral Q.” (Hopkins Papers)↩
- According to an undated British memorandum summarizing the communications with de Gaulle and Giraud between January 16 and January 21, 1943, just before midnight on January 20, Churchill received a telegram from Eden stating that de Gaulle was leaving that night, weather permitting. De Gaulle’s flight was postponed on January 21, due to the weather, and de Gaulle did not actually leave England until early on January 22 (Roosevelt Papers).↩
- Not found in American files. For text of the telegram from Churchill to de Gaulle as received by the latter, see de Gaulle, Documents, pp. 127–128. For the original text of Churchill’s telegram to de Gaulle as transmitted in the Prime Minister’s telegram to Eden of January 18 and presumably prior to its revision by the Cabinet, see Churchill, Hinge of Fate, pp. 680–681.↩