741.6111/32: Telegram
The Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Winant) to the Secretary of State
[Received May 21—1:45 p.m.]
2829. To the President and the Secretary. Our Russian visitor11 (my telegram No. 2807, May 20, 8 p.m.12) is staying down in the country. Through Eden he sent word to me this morning that he will go directly from here to Washington and asked that there be no publicity given to his journey there. He asks both the British and ourselves, and Stalin has supported his request, that he be allowed to come here, go to the United States and return here and go back to Russia before any announcement of his trip is made public. It is expected that the present negotiations here will last for several days.
A brief preliminary conference was held this morning which Eden described to me as easy and friendly. The Russians are still however [Page 558] holding to their original requests for the Baltic States and the Finnish line. Eden explained to him our position and England’s relationship to us and that all three countries should work together. The Russian visitor in turn reminded Eden that there was also a public opinion in Russia that had to be considered. A second conference is scheduled for this afternoon.
I am asking for a meeting with the visitor tomorrow.
[In The Memoirs of Cordell Hull (New York, 1948), volume II, page 1172, there occurs the following passage:
“At this point [after the arrival of the telegram of May 21, 1942, from Ambassador Winant] I sent the President another memorandum, which was even stronger than the one of February 4. It bluntly expressed our belief that signature of the proposed Anglo-Soviet treaty, with the territorial clauses included, would be a terrible blow to the whole cause of the United Nations. We proposed that a final telegram along these lines be sent to Winant to be communicated to the British.
“We indicated that, if the treaty in its proposed form were signed, we might not be able to remain silent since silence might give tacit consent. On the contrary we might have to issue a separate statement clearly stating that we did not subscribe to its principles and clauses. This would be a sharp break within the United Nations, on this point at least, but there was no other course we could logically pursue.
“Our memorandum was so strong that we were in some fear lest the President disapprove it. Mr. Roosevelt, however, quickly returned, it with his O. K., and we immediately sent Winant a cable repeating its substance.”
It has been impossible to locate a copy of this other memorandum, or of the final telegram to Ambassador Winant based upon it, either in the files of the Department of State, or at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park, N. Y., or among the Hull papers, at the Library of Congress.]