Office of the Historian

Roosevelt Papers: Telegram

Prime Minister Churchill to President Roosevelt 1

most secret
most immediate
August 27, 1943.

Following for immediate delivery to the President.

Begins. Colonel Warden to President Roosevelt. Personal and Most Secret.2

Your No. 346.3 Thank you so much. Starting from Ottawa Tuesday 31st. Will reach you for dinner Wednesday. Subaltern and I have caught a few, and the change and air are doing us all good. Portal and Brooke have won great victories on the same front. Cabinet have cabled expressing pleasure at the satisfactory result of our conference and urging me to take a holiday as all is quiet in England.

2. U. J.’s last two telegrams4 have been distinctly more civil. I think we should agree both to the secondary meeting and to the setting up of the Commission, though not in Sicily. This is certainly the view of my Cabinet subject to settlement of details. Anthony5 is coming here to-night, and I shall be ready to settle the whole thing with you in detail when we meet.

3. If you think an interim message is required I suggest something on these lines:—

Begins. We are considering your proposals and have little doubt that plans satisfactory to all of us can be made both for the meeting on the Foreign Office level and for the Tripartite Commission. Prime Minister and I will be meeting again early next week and will telegraph you further. Ends.

[Page 1182]

It may well be however that you will think no interim reply need be made.

4. Mountbatten’s appointment seems to have gone well.

5. Many congratulations on your splendid speech at Ottawa6 which delighted the whole Dominion. I have put off my broadcast till Tuesday. Ends.

  1. Sent to the British Embassy, Washington, and forwarded to the White House on the evening of August 27; reforwarded to Roosevelt, who was then at Hyde Park, by the White House Map Room as telegram No. White 138. The British Charge (Campbell) transmitted a copy of this message to Hull on August 28 (811.001 Roosevelt, F.D./9357).↩
  2. This preliminary language is omitted in telegram No. White 138, and in its place is the following: “Former Naval Person from British. Embassy to the President”.↩
  3. Ante, p. 1178.↩
  4. The reference is presumably to Stalin’s message of August 24, 1943 (ante, p. 1174), which may have reached Churchill in two parts. See Stalin’s Correspondence, vol. i, pp. 149–150.↩
  5. Eden.↩
  6. See Rosenman, pp. 365–369; Department of State Bulletin, vol. ix, August 28, 1943, pp. 122–124.↩