BRITISH EMBASSY,
 
      WASHINGTON, D.C.
 
      11th February, 1941.
 
      (W.T.36/25/41)
 
      
 
 
My dear Mr. President,
 
      
 
 
You will remember that on Saturday afternoon I mentioned to 
      you the gravity which my Government attach to the leaks which 
      are at present occurring in the blockade, and said that we were 
      feeling obliged to stop a r attention to one or two items which 
      I am quoting in a memorandum to Mr. Sumnerfew of the offending 
      ships which in the main are Russian and Japanese.
 
      
 
 
I am writing to the Under-Secretary of State about this matter 
      in some detail, but in view of my promise to let you have a few 
      facts relating to this traffic, more particularly via the Far 
      East, I should like briefly to draw you Welles.
 
      
 
 
On Saturday we mentioned cotton in particular, and I think 
      you felt that the case had not been made out that buying here 
      Russia has been supplying Germany. On this I do not suggest that 
      the cotton which Russia has been in recent months was necessarily 
      itself going to Germany. The position is that Russia herself 
      grows. In the last quarter of 1940 she imported some 28,000 tons 
      from your country although American-type cotton and that she 
      has not for some years imported any cotton from the United States 
      her own cotton harvest
 
      
 
 
The Honorable Franklin D. Roosevelt,
 
      President of the United States of America,
 
      Washington, D. C.