Editorial Note

This meeting is mentioned in the Log, ante, p. 290. The only information on the substance of the conversation which has been found is that contained in a memorandum by the Secretary of the Treasury’s Assistant (White), post, p. 323, where it is indicated that later on September 13 Roosevelt told Morgenthau about his conversation with Churchill, presumably during luncheon. According to this source, Roosevelt had asked Churchill, who had been very glum, how he would like to have the steel business of Europe for twenty or thirty years, and Churchill had “seemed much excited over the possibility”.

At one of the Roosevelt–Churchill meetings on September 13, a suggestion was made that Fiorello La Guardia should go to Italy as the President’s representative and that while there he should be invited to attend the meetings of the Allied Control Commission. See Churchill’s allusion to this suggestion in a letter to Roosevelt dated September 14, 1944, post, p. 418; cf. ante, p. 42.