868.01/549: Telegram

The Secretary of State to the Ambassador to the Greek Government in Exile in Egypt (MacVeagh)

Greek 75. Please arrange delivery of following reply from the President to message quoted in your Greek 155, May 15:

“I have received your welcome and reassuring message. We Americans are firm friends of the Greek people, who have fought so valiantly and suffered so direly during the course of the war, and have therefore been profoundly distressed by the recent disunity in Greek ranks. But we remember that the Greeks have always shown the capacity to submerge their differences and rally together in times of real national crisis. The occasion and the opportunity exist again [Page 110] today and it is our earnest hope and prayer that the Greek leaders assembled in the Near East will make of the current conference a new landmark of purposeful unity in Greek history.”

If you consider such action desirable, we shall be glad to release both messages for publication. Please advise whether the authors should be mentioned by name or only as “certain Greek leaders now attending the Greek political conference in the Near East”.

Hull