Roosevelt Papers
Memorandum by Mr. Hopkins1
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After an altogether pleasant luncheon, with the ever present caviar—this time not so good—and vodka, Litvinoff and I had coffee alone in his study.
I asked him what the significance was of the Pravda article attacking the Army for declaring Manila an open city. He told me it was written by an inconsequential writer and could not possibly represent the Government’s point of view.
I reminded him that Pravda was the party paper and there was a controlled press in Russia and that the article could not possibly have been published without the approval of the Government. Litvinoff then retreated to the argument that many critical things were published in America about Stalin and Russia and Russia never complained about them.
[Page 171]I told him that that was not a parallel case because he knew perfectly well we had a free and uncontrolled press while in Russia the press is entirely a state affair. I told him I thought the whole business was extremely unfortunate and if any more things happened like that it would make it very difficult for us.
We discussed the war at great length and he told me he had no confidence in Japan and he was sure that Japan was going to attack Russia at the earliest possible moment, but that Russia was at the moment unprepared but had little doubt that by spring she would be at war with Japan.
He asked me why I thought Churchill was so impatient with him at our conference the other day.2 I told him I had no idea and thought it was a matter of no very great importance.
Litvinoff was sure, however, that it was not directed at him personally but that Churchill was endeavoring to impress him with his impatience for some ulterior reason.
Litvinoff expressed the belief that Churchill was a great war Prime Minister but would not be very useful after the war was over.
He thinks that Roosevelt is going to be the dominating person at the peace table. He expressed himself with very considerable emotion about the President, stating that ever since he first met him in 1933 he believed that he had the best grasp of world economic and political conditions of any living man and he still holds to this belief.
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