860c.01/6–445: Telegram
No. 50
Prime Minister Churchill to President Truman
1
Prime Minister to President Truman. Personal and top secret. No. 72.
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4. I am particularly anxious for the conference3 to resume, especially with the invited delegates, before we meet, because I am sure more business will be done between “The Three”, as Stalin calls us, in a fortunate hour than can be wrangled out with Molotov and the Ambassadors, try they ever so skilfully.
5. You have no doubt seen my No. 634 about the date of our next meeting. I am sure you understand the reason why I am anxious for an earlier date, say the 3rd or 4th. I view with profound misgivings the retreat of the American Army to our line of occupation in the Central Sector, thus bringing Soviet power into the heart of Western Europe and the descent of an iron curtain between us and everything to the eastward.
I hoped that this retreat, if it has to be made, would be accompanied by the settlement of many great things which would be the true foundation of world peace. Nothing really important has been settled yet and you and I will have to bear great responsibility for the future.
I still hope therefore that the date will be advanced. However, if this cannot be, I accept July 15. In either case it would be necessary to bring with me Mr. Attlee, the leader of the Socialist Party in Great Britain. He is, as you know, in full agreement at the present time with our foreign policy, but the United States and Soviet Russia have a right to know that they are dealing with the whole of Britain, whatever our immediate party future may be.
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- Sent by the United States Military Attaché, London, via Army channels. A courtesy copy was forwarded to the Acting Secretary of State by the British Minister at Washington on June 5 (file No. 860c.01/6–545).↩
- For paragraphs 2 and 3 of this message, see Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, p. 582.↩
- Of the Polish Commission at Moscow, i. e., Harriman, Clark Kerr, and Molotov.↩
- document No. 47.↩