-52- #669, Eighteenth from London              
 
                                                            
 
 
                     mastery and power?                     
 
                                                            
 
 
I am clear that nothing should induce us to abandon the principle 
      of unconditional surrender and enter into any form of negotiation 
      with Germany or Japan under whatever guise such suggestions may 
      present themselves until the act of unconditional surrender has 
      been formally executed. But the President of the United States 
      and I in your name have repeatedly declared that the enforcement 
      of unconditional surrender upon the enemy in no way relieves 
      the victorious powers of their obligations to humanity or of 
      their duties as civilized christian nations. I read somewhere 
      that when the ancient Athenians on one occasion overpowered a 
      tribe in the treacherous means and when they had the hostile 
      army herded on a beach naked for slaughter Peloponnesus which 
      had wrought them great injury by base they forgave them and set 
      them free and they said: "This was not