Foreign Relations of the United States, Conferences at Washington and Quebec, 1943

J.C.S. Files

The Combined Chiefs of Staff to President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill ¹

secret

[Washington,] 10 September 1943.

Memorandum for the President and the Prime Minister

Subject: Propaganda Committees To Handle Emergency Situations.

Reference: C.C.S. 310/2² (copy attached).

We have made a further examination of the question raised by us with you in our memorandum of 8 [3] September 1943, and would like to make clear two points in connection with it.

In the first place, our proposal was in no way intended to cover the arrangements that will be necessary for the general direction of propaganda. This must, of course, be a matter for the two Governments. We were merely trying to set up a machinery for giving decisions in emergency, machinery which recent experience has shown to be most necessary.

Secondly, the inclusion of representatives of O.W.I. and the British P.W.E. has already been arranged.

We would be grateful, therefore, if approval could be given for this emergency procedure to be set up, at least provisionally. It would meet a real military need.

For the Combined Chiefs of Staff:

J. G. Dill

Field Marshal Head of the British Joint Staff Mission in Washington

William D. Leahy

Admiral, U.S. Navy
Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy

1. Approved by the Combined Chiefs of Staff at their 118th Meeting, September 10, 1943. See ante, p. 1226. The text of this memorandum was circulated by the Secretaries of the Combined Chiefs of Stan: as the enclosure to C.C.S. 310/4, September 11, 1943.
2. See ante, p. 1315.