Editor’s Note
—No official record of the substance of this conversation has been found. Stimson’s diary entry for July 17 contains the following summary:
“I returned to Potsdam and lunched with the Prime Minister, Attlee, and Lord Leathers, … We had some talk about ships—the distribution of the German merchant marine, Europe and others. We discussed the coal situation in Great Britain and the United States—supplies of both were going to be short this winter.
“As he1 walked down to the gate I told him of Harrison’s message.2 He had not heard from his own people about the matter. He was intensely interested and greatly cheered up, but was strongly inclined against any disclosure.3 I argued against this to some length.”4
- i. e., Churchill.↩
- Document No. 1303, post.↩
- Presumably this refers to any disclosure to the Soviet Union.↩
- Cf. Churchill’s description of the concluding part of this conversation printed in Winston S. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy (vol. vi of The Second World War ) (Boston, 1953), p. 637.↩