Office of the Historian

J. C. S. Files

No. 1265
The Commanding General, Army Service Forces (Somervell) to the Joint Chiefs of Staff
secret
[Babelsberg,] 23 July 1945.

Memorandum for the U. S. Chiefs of Staff

Subject: Cargo Shipping.

Lord Leathers has just called me on the ’phone, stating that after lunching with the Prime Minister and General [Field Marshal] Brooke, that he had stated that he would seek an agreement on the wording of his paragraph, leaving for the conference tomorrow, a discussion only on the place of the paragraph in the report. The wording which Lord Leathers now submits is as follows:

“Present estimates of the requirements for cargo shipping indicate the position to be sufficiently manageable to provide for the maximum effort in the prosecution of the war against Japan, for the maintenance of the war making capacity of the British Commonwealth of Nations and the Western Hemisphere, insofar as it is connected with the prosecution of the war against Japan and for an additional amount for [for] the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the United Kingdom and for supplies to liberated areas and for essential civil programs of the Western Hemisphere civilian requirements. Should a substantial conflict arise the shipping situation will be a matter for examination by the two Governments at the time and in the light of changed conditions.”

The underlining1 represents the re-insertion of his original phraseology of the first sentence2 plus the phrase “and for essential civil programs of the Western Hemisphere” and the elimination of the all inclusive term “civilian requirements” as used in the U. S. paper.3 The U. S. phraseology is broader than the British but is much shorter.

The latest proposal of Lord Leathers seems to be entirely acceptable to me and I recommend that I be authorized to so notify him.4

Somervell
  1. Represented here by italics.↩
  2. Cf. document No. 1262.↩
  3. Document No. 1264.↩
  4. This paper bears the following manuscript endorsement by Leahy: “OK WDL”.↩