September 26, 1944.
 
 
My dear Mr. President:
 
 
 When I returned to Woodley last Sunday afternoon, I found a 
beautiful bunch of roses with a very kind card from you indicating that 
you had remembered my birthday. Birthdays at my age are not desirable 
memorabilia, but the kindness which lay behind the gift was very touching 
to me. I thank you greatly.
 
 
 I also found your memorandum of September 22nd asking me to
speak to you the next time I saw you about my memorandum of September 15th 
in respect to Germany. I should have gone to see you at once but found 
that you were in Hyde Park. The publicity which has been excited over 
this matter is of course most deplorable, but fortunately from the 
mutually contradictory forms of the rumors even an outsider can recognize 
that probably none of them are accurate. In the meanwhile we all, from 
the State Department, the Treasury, and my own Department, have been going 
ahead in an attempt to make progress on the immediate steps before us 
without any further disagreement. I am happy to say that we have all three 
Departments agreed upon a form of post-surrender interim directive to 
General Eisenhower which, after it is cleared by the British, can be sent 
at once to him without further disagreement. Harry Hopkins has seen it 
and approved it. I think it will be a step in the right direction. It 
does not attempt to conclude any of the long distance future steps about 
which we may have different opinions.