Office of the Historian

740.00112 EW/7–1944

Memorandum by the Director of the Office of Wartime Economic Affairs (Taft) to the Under Secretary of State (Stettinius)

[Washington,] August 5, 1944.

In connection with your memorandum of July 19th to me8a on your conversation with Mr. Richard Law, Mr. Currie9 himself has told [Page 53] me that he is entirely willing to postpone the final decision on the White Paper until cold weather—meaning after the 6th [7th?] of November!10

On the second paragraph, Mr. Law and his assistant met with the FEA people, including Whitney, and they discussed this quite frankly. Whitney pointed out that he was not really pushing any large matters at all, but was only picking occasional samples out of the most unimportant cases which were referred to the FEA by the British. He asked Law whether he was proposing that we should stop all enforcement, or simply that we should not increase our pressure. He tells me that Law clearly indicated that he hoped we would stop all pressure. Whitney is not willing to do that, but it is clear that he will not increase it, and the British should be satisfied with that.

Whitney does not wish to go to England now. He claims that the invitation, which he knew about already, is issued either on the theory that they can soften him up (which he says they will not do), or they want him out of Washington, which he does not wish to go along on.

  1. See the memorandum of July 19 to Mr. Acheson, and footnote 4, p. 50.↩
  2. Lauchlin Currie, Administrative Assistant to President Roosevelt and Deputy Administrator of the Foreign Economic Administration.↩
  3. Presumably reference here is to election day in the United States, November 7, 1944.↩