Office of the Historian

740.00119 Council/10–345: Telegram

The Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Winant) to the Secretary of State

London, October 3, 1945—10 p.m.
[Received 11:25 p.m.]

10315. For the Secretary84 from Dunn. Mr. Bevin decided not to have a press conference today as he was well satisfied with the press reports of the ending of the conference as far as the British press was concerned and he was particularly pleased with your press conference. From first accounts of some of the representatives of the American press present at Molotov’s conference85 Mr. Molotov gave the impression of being on the defensive. He gave out textually as you expected his last “conciliatory” proposal. I immediately gave Mr. Bevin your message about how to deal with it. He agreed with your suggestions and said he would give them out through the Foreign Office as guidance to the press probably without having a press conference himself.86 [Dunn.]

Winant
  1. The Secretary and his party left London for the United States by air shortly after noon, October 3.↩
  2. The text of Foreign Commissar Molotov’s press conference in London on October 3, 1945, was printed in the Moscow newspaper Izvestia, October 4, 1945, as well as in the volume Vneshnyaya politika sovetskogo soyuza: 1945 god (Moscow, 1949), pp. 74–80. A translation of the press conference was transmitted to the Department as an enclosure to despatch 2168, October 4, 1945, from Moscow, not printed (740.00119 Council/10–445).↩
  3. For the statement by Foreign Secretary Bevin to the House of Commons on October 9, 1945, see Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 5th series, vol. 414, cols. 35–41.↩