Roosevelt Papers: Telegram
Prime Minister Churchill to President Roosevelt 1
Prime Minister to President Roosevelt, personal and Top Secret, No. 886.
1. Shall we not have to warn the Turks of the impending arrival of the two ships? We could indeed argue that they are “merchant vessels” for the purposes of the Montreux Convention, with purely defensive armament and not bound on any exclusively military mission. They could thus in theory arrive unannounced at the Straits; but the Turks could still insist on stopping and examining them, and in fact they would be obliged under Article Three to stop for sanitary inspection, which might lead to anything.
2. Should we not tell President Inonu about them at the latest possible moment, for his own strictly personal information, and ask him to give all the orders necessary to ensure that the ships shall pass [Page 35] through unquestioned except by formality? There would be no need to tell him more than that there was going to be a meeting of the heads of governments some day somewhere in the Black Sea.
- Sent by the United States Military Attaché, London, via Army channels.↩