Office of the Historian

800.6363/8–1044

The British Chargé (Campbell) to the Acting Secretary of State

Washington, 10 August, 1944.

Dear Ed: You will remember that on August 3rd you asked me to send a special personal message from you to Mr. Eden to say that, though at a Plenary Session of the United States and the United Kingdom Delegations on Petroleum the previous day you had found it necessary to take a firm stand in respect of one of our proposals, you wished him to know that you remained as hitherto the friend of Great Britain and the standard-bearer of cooperation between our two countries. With all the great problems which our two countries had to surmount together, you had felt that we should keep on the hill-top, but that we had dropped below it.

I duly sent a message on these lines and I have now received from Mr. Eden a message, the text of which I attach.

Yours ever

Ronald I. Campbell
[Enclosure]

Telegram From the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Eden)

“Please thank Stettinius and tell him that my ears are always very open to anything he has to say to me. I want to help him and his country as he has often helped us and mine.

2.
We are greatly relieved to have reached an agreement over oil, and I am very hopeful that the Commission we have set up will eliminate quietly a great many troubles connected with oil in the past.
3.
The team I have now sent him for talks on future world organisation is led by a seasoned mountaineer who, while he cuts steps will have the summit in mind.”34
  1. Sir Alexander Cadogan, Permanent Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, was the head of the British delegation for the First Phase of the Washington Conversations on International Organization at Dumbarton Oaks, August 21–September 28, 1944; see vol. i , section entitled “Preliminaries to the establishment of an international organization for the maintenance of international peace and security,” part II.↩