Editorial Note
At Roosevelt’s request the Chiefs of Mission of various Allied and friendly countries called at the White House on the afternoon of December [Page 118] 27. According to the President’s appointment calendar in the Roosevelt Papers, the Chiefs of Mission came in different groups and were received in the Red Room. The first group, which came at noon, included representatives of the Latin American Republics; the Chinese Ambassador, Hu Shih, and the newly-appointed Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs, T. V. Soong, came at 12:30 p.m.; Prime Minister Mackenzie King, Halifax, and representatives of the other British Dominions came at 2 p.m.; and the Chiefs of Mission of other governments at war with the Axis Powers came at 3:30 p.m. No United States record of the discussions at these meetings has been found, but a memorandum by Dr. Don Francisco Castillo Nájera, Ambassador of Mexico, which was described as the only written record of the first session, was made available in its Spanish original text to the Department of State and was circulated in that form early in 1942 to United States diplomatic officers in the other American Republics. An English translation (infra) has been made for the the present volume. At one or more of the sessions Roosevelt apparently announced that a draft declaration of Allied unity was nearing completion and that all countries at war with the Axis powers would soon have an opportunity to subscribe to it. In a telegram to Attlee, Churchill stated: “Today for five hours President and I received representatives of all other Allied or friendly Powers and British Dominions, and made heartening statements to them” (Churchill, The Grand Alliance, p. 674). See also the reference to the meeting by the Polish Ambassador (Ciechanowski) in Foreign Relations, 1942, vol. i, p. 20.