800.796/659
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Assistant Secretary of State (Berle)
Lord Halifax came in to see me at my request. Speaking on behalf of Michael Wright, Lord Halifax said that they had received a cable from the Foreign Office. The Foreign Office hoped:
- (1)
- That my stop in Canada en route to London would not be highly publicized. I told him I cordially agreed.
- (2)
- That the Foreign Office shared our hope that the visit might be kept very quiet, but that if our Government thought it necessary to say something, a statement might go out to the effect that the American representative was in London merely to exchange ideas looking forward to preliminary international negotiations later on, probably this summer.
Lord Halifax added that it was his personal feeling that a brief announcement of this kind ought to be made, since there was no such thing as a secret trip to London. I told him I wanted to consult the Secretary about that, but this was my view also.
[Page 420]Lord Halifax added that he thought it would be well to work this out apart from Stettinius’ mission,67 which, of course, dealt with other matters.
I said that this was our feeling likewise, and I wanted to inquire about dates. Stettinius was leaving in a few days; he would be spending perhaps three weeks in London. There had been some discussion here of postponing my visit until he got through and came home. Lord Halifax said he thought that would be unfortunate; we have got the thing just up to a point where something could be done, and there was always danger of its bogging down either here or in London. Also, he hoped we could get going fairly soon. I told him that I had no views on that until I had talked further with Secretary Hull. We shared his desire to get on with the business.
- Mission of Under Secretary of State Stettinius to London, April 7–29, 1944; see vol. iii, pp. 1 ff.↩