Roosevelt Papers
Prime Minister Churchill to President Roosevelt
My Dear Franklin, I send you herewith a number of notes and telegrams which I have prepared, arising out of our talks yesterday. These include a telegram to U.J. 1 which, as it mentions your affairs, I [Page 1337] have asked my Government to hold till I get your okay with any alterations.
We have all greatly enjoyed this trip, and I cannot tell you what a pleasure it has been to me, to Clemmie and to Mary to receive your charming hospitality at the White House and at Hyde Park. You know how I treasure the friendship with which you have honoured me and how profoundly I feel that we might together do something really fine and lasting for our two countries and, through them, for the future of all.
Yours ever,
- For the text of Churchill’s draft message to Stalin, which constitutes enclosure 1 and which dealt largely with possible arrangements for a tripartite meeting of Heads of Government, see Foreign Relations, The Conferences at Cairo and Tehran, 1943, p. 26. Roosevelt apparently failed to give Churchill his views on this draft message, and a reminder was sent through the British Chargé at Washington (Campbell) on September 17, 1943. Roosevelt sent his comments to Churchill on October 4, 1943, but Churchill in the meantime had sent a different message to Stalin. See ibid., pp. 25, 27–28; Stalin’s Correspondence, vol. i, pp. 165–166.↩
- On the source texts of enclosures 2, 3, and 5, Churchill’s initials are handwritten but not in his own hand. On enclosure 4 his initials are typed. There are no initials on enclosure 6.↩
- Ante, p. 1315.↩
- Publication of the Minutes of the Paris Peace Conference. [Footnote in the source text. The messages referred to have not been found in United States files.]↩
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Following his discussion of this subject with Churchill, Roosevelt sent the following memorandum to Hull on September 16, 1943:
“In regard to the publication of the meetings with the Big Four in Paris in 1919, I am still not satisfied that it is advisable at this time. Their publication now would probably result in wholly unwarranted sensational articles. Such articles would, without doubt, come from hostile sources. They would seek to draw untrue conclusions and parallels between 1919 and 1943. I am especially anxious that this wholly preventable result should not occur.
“I would suggest that if the Congress asks about the matter that they be told that the President has requested that they be not published until after the war, in order to avoid at this time the reopening of international controversy. They cannot go behind that with any success.
“Incidentally, in those meetings of the Big Four in Paris no notes should have been kept. Four people cannot be conversationally frank with each other if somebody is taking down notes for future publication.
“I feel very strongly about this and incidentally it is not going to do anybody any harm if we defer publication for a year or two.” (023.1/9–1643)
For Hull’s recommendation on this subject, see ante, p. 1334. The minutes of the Council of Four to which Roosevelt referred were eventually published by the Department of State in 1946 in Foreign Relations, The Paris Peace Conference, 1919, vols. v and vi .
↩ - (Message to the King of Greece) [Manuscript footnote in the source text. Eden’s telegram No. Concrete 798 has not been found in United States files.]↩
- For the text of Roosevelt’s message of September 6, 1943, to King George II of the Hellenes, see ante, p. 1046, fn. 5. The American Ambassador to Greece (Kirk) was instructed on September 18, 1943, that publication of Roosevelt’s message was authorized if and when Churchill’s message was released (868.01/387).↩
- Not found in United States files.↩
- Count Carlo Sforza, an Italian anti-Fascist leader then in the United States, had been informed by Assistant Secretary of State Adolf A. Berle, Jr., on September 2, 1943, that “we would be glad to endeavor to arrange his passage to North Africa.” See Foreign Relations, 1943, vol. ii, p. 402.↩
- The British Embassy at Washington notified the Department of State on September 25, 1943, that the British Foreign Office then felt that Sforza should proceed to Europe as soon as possible.↩