Office of the Historian

893.01A/164

Mr. Lauchlin Currie to President Roosevelt 67

Washington, May 6, 1941.

Memorandum for the President:

Re: Political Adviser to Chiang Kai-shek.

I am attaching (a) a memorandum which I showed you last week, (b) a letter from Isaiah Bowman and (c) a letter from Admiral Yarnell.68

I should like to renew my suggestion that you give Owen Lattimore an appointment to discuss the Chinese situation before taking any action. If you should decide to recommend him it is most important that he be thought to possess your confidence.

Lauchlin Currie
  1. Transmitted by President Roosevelt on May 19 to the Secretary of State with covering memorandum: “What do you think of having the Chinese Government appoint Owen Lattimore as political adviser? It sounds good to me. F. D. R.”↩
  2. None printed; these were a memorandum of April 29 by Dr. Currie on Owen Lattimore’s qualifications as political adviser to Generalissimo Chiang; and two replies of May 2 from President Bowman of Johns Hopkins University and Rear Admiral Harry B. Yarnell, USN (retired), to letters dated April 30 from Dr. Currie. Mr. Lattimore was director of the Walter Hines Page School of International Relations at Johns Hopkins University and editor of Pacific Affairs, organ of the Institute of Pacific Relations.↩