Roosevelt Papers
Prime Minister Churchill to President Roosevelt
My Dear Friend, 1. Would it be agreeable to you to discuss with me sometime today our Italian policy?1 I must fill up the Chairmanship of the Allied Control Commission, and I feel the great need of a competent politician and Minister there, like Macmillan, rather than a General. I was distressed and disquieted by the tales I heard of serious food shortages in some parts of Rome and other great towns. Unemployment looms big in Italy. We may also soon have the populous North flowing on to our hands. I was hoping we might together make up an agreeable programme for Italy, which could be announced, comprising resumption of their export trade, interchange of diplomatic representatives à la Russe,2 and bringing them into the area of U.N.R.R.A. as co-belligerents if that can be managed. If not, some other scheme of effective relief. You spoke of La Guardia having a Mission. This also I should like to discuss with you.
2. The Staffs are forming their contacts this morning and browsing over the Agenda on general lines. But would it not be well to have a plenary session tomorrow where you and I can put forward the fundamentals of our future war policy. This will enable them to go ahead much more rapidly and easily.
3. A small point. Leathers is longing for Admiral Land. You said you were keeping him handy; but if he could come up soon, these two would be together working out their complicated affairs, while we are busy with other things, and have results ready for us at each stage.
4. Some of the Boniface I sent you this morning appeared to me to be of profound significance. Alexander’s battle is a hard one, but now that Clark has crashed into the centre I am hopeful of speedy results.
Yours always,
- No record has been found of a Roosevelt–Churchill discussion of Italy on September 12. The appointment to the Allied Control Commission was not settled on that date, as Churchill wrote to Roosevelt again on September 14 definitely proposing Macmillan. See post, p. 417.↩
- The Soviet Union had established relations with Italy on March 13, 1944, without prior notice to the United States and British Governments.↩