860C.01/4–1345: Telegram
President Truman 16 to the British Prime Minister (Churchill)
[1.] I am grateful for your message of sympathy17 to me and to this nation. In the presence of the great irreparable loss which we have suffered which I know you feel as deeply as I do, I wish to send you this personal message of assurance that with God’s help I will do everything in my power to move forward the great work to which President Roosevelt gave his life. At no time in our respective histories has it been more important that the intimate, solid, relations which you and the late President had forged between our countries be preserved and developed. It is my earnest hope that before too long in the furtherance of this that we can arrange a personal meeting. In the meantime there are, however, urgent problems requiring our immediate and joint consideration. I have in mind the pressing and dangerous problem of Poland and the Soviet attitude towards the Moscow negotiations. I am, of course, familiar with the exchanges which you and President Roosevelt have had between yourselves and with Marshal Stalin. I also know in general what President Roosevelt had in mind as the next step. I shall send you in my immediately following telegram my suggestions, in line with President Roosevelt’s thoughts, as to the replies which might be made to Stalin’s messages of April 7 on Poland.
You can count on me to continue the loyal and close collaboration which to the benefit of the entire world existed between you and our great President.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, and was succeeded in the Presidency by Harry S. Truman. The file copy of this message is not signed, but President Truman noted at the end “Approved H S T”.↩
- For Prime Minister Churchill’s message of April 13 to President Truman, see Winston S. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, p. 480, and Harry S. Truman, Memoirs by Harry S. Truman, vol. i, Year of Decisions (Garden City, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1955), p. 20.↩