Roosevelt Papers: Telegram
President Roosevelt to Prime Minister Churchill1
operational priority
Personal and secret from the President to the Former Naval Person Number 297.
Your #328. I did not suggest to UJ that we meet alone but he told Davies that he assumed (a) that we would meet alone and (b) that he agreed that we should not bring staffs to what would be a preliminary meeting.
He intimated that he would bring only a total of four or five people and on this assumption I would propose to take only Hopkins and Harriman.
There are certain advantages in such a preliminary meeting which I know you will appreciate. First, that without staffs there will be no military collisions in regard to demands for an immediate roundup.2 Second, that he will not think that we are demanding a Russian offensive this summer if the Germans do not attack. Third, that in my opinion he will be more frank in giving his views on the offensive against Japan now and later. Fourth, that he would also be more frank in regard to China. Fifth, that he would be more frank in regard to the Balkan States, Finland and Poland.
I want to explore his thinking as fully as possible concerning Russia’s post-war hopes and ambitions. I would want to cover much the same field with him as did Eden for you a year ago.3
What would you think of coming over soon afterwards and that you and I with staffs should meet in the Citadel in Quebec? I am sure the Canadian Government would turn it over to us and it is a thoroughly comfortable spot, with thoroughly adequate accommodations [Page 12] there and at the Hotel Frontenac. It is far better than Washington at that time of year.
While UJ gave no definite dates he suggested the end of July or early August. This is wholly tentative and I do not expect to hear anything further until about the fifteenth of July.
If he confirms this, I would be back about August fifteenth. I would have to be in Washington for a week but could easily get to some place in eastern Canada by the twenty-fifth of August.4
Of course, you and I are completely frank in matters of this kind and I agree with you that later in the autumn we should most definitely have a full dress meeting with the Russians. That is why I think of a visit with Stalin as a preparatory talk on what you rightly call a lower level. Finally I gather from Davies the Kremlin people do not at all like the idea of UJ flying across Finland, Sweden, Norway and the North Sea to Scapa, especially at this time of year when there is practically no darkness.
I have the idea that your conception is the right one from the short point of view, but mine is the right one from the long point of view. I wish there were no distances.
- Sent to the United States Naval Attaché, London, via Navy channels.↩
- Although the word “roundup” appears in lower-case letters in the source text, it was presumably intended as the code name Roundup.↩
- See Feis, pp. 25–28.↩
- The records of the conversations held by Roosevelt and Churchill in Canada (First Quebec Conference) and in the United States, during August-September 1943, are scheduled to be published subsequently in another volume of the Foreign Relations series.↩