Foreign Relations of the United States, Conference at Quebec, 1944

Roosevelt Papers: Telegram

President Roosevelt to Prime Minister Churchill¹

top secret
priority

[Aboard the Presidential Special,] 17 July 1944.

Number 585, personal and top secret, from the President for the Former Naval Person.

Your 732² and 733.³

I am half way across the continent and think this is the best opportunity to go through with this trip. This means I will not get back until between the fifteenth and twentieth of August. I ought to be a fortnight in Washington. I wholly agree that we three should meet but it would be a lot easier for me if we could make it the tenth or fifteenth of September. This is just before the Equinox. I am rather keen about the idea of Invergordon or a spot on the west coast of Scotland. I like the idea of the battleship. This would get me back in plenty of time for the election, although that is in the lap of the Gods. I am sending a telegram, as per my next, to Uncle Joe purely as a feeler.⁴ If he feels he cannot come you and I should meet anyway.

Roosevelt

1. Sent to the White House Map Room; forwarded to the United States Naval Attaché, London, via Navy channels.
2. Ante, p. 10.
3. Supra.
4. For Roosevelt’s exchange of messages with Stalin on the possibility of a tripartite meeting, see Foreign Relations, The Conferences at; Malta and Yalta, 1945, pp. 3–5. Roosevelt repeated to Churchill, in his telegram No. 586 (not printed), the text of the message sent to Stalin on July 17, 1944.