Office of the Historian

800.796/11–1144

The Chairman of the American Delegation to the International Civil Aviation Conference (Berle) to the Acting Secretary of State (Stettinius)

[Chicago,] November 11, 1944.
[Received November 14.]

Dear Ed: Thank you for your letter of November 89 with its enclosed explanation by the British Ambassador of the Soviet withdrawal. I don’t think he is right because the Soviets also pulled out of the European Inland Transport negotiations on the ground that the Poles were there, and likewise took a contrary view to the maritime arrangements in progress, this time giving no reason at all. I think it reflected the fact that some question was left unsettled by the Churchill-Stalin talks.10 But this may be overstating it; they may merely have decided that they did not want to move out in civil aviation anyway because they were not yet prepared to play a decisive role in it.

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I have been sending memoranda diary reports back when I had time to dictate them;11 and I am having a flock of delegation minutes sent to you. I should not think you would be greatly interested in the stacks of paper produced by the Conference.

We are nearing the climax. The British, who came with a proposal which was not only unacceptable but rather offensively so, took about a week to discover that it would not do, and then asked for guidance in the revised proposal which they are prepared to submit. The Delegation is plugging at it, and I hope we shall sit down to the decisive conference between the British and the Canadians in a day or so. After that we should be getting pretty well forward. I still hope to end this Conference in ten days but it may run over a little.

The minor ruckus (which was easily settled) about voting for members of the air council is really a main line row breezing up against domination by the big powers, and is a backwash of Dumbarton Oaks.12 You may want to give this some thought. I haven’t a cat’s idea as to the answer as yet.

Sincerely yours,

Adolf Berle
  1. Not found in Department files.↩
  2. For documentation on Prime Minister Churchill’s conference with Marshal Stalin at Moscow, in October 1944, see vol. iv, pp. 1002–1024, passim.↩
  3. Diary reports not printed; but see Mr. Berle’s report to the President, December 7, p. 599.↩
  4. For documentation on the conversations held at Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, August 21 to October 7, 1944, see vol. i, pp. 713 ff.↩