#4-142
To Emanuel Celler
October 22, 1943 [Washington, D.C.]
My dear Mr. Celler,
Thanks for your gracious note of October twentieth.1 It is very reassuring to me. My experience has been that where the opportunity was presented for explaining matters to the Congress invariably I receive strong backing. The difficulty in the past, particularly before we entered the war, was the fact that much of what we knew, for several sound reasons could not be disclosed, all of which proved a great embarrassment in getting forward with our program.
Again my thanks for your note.
Faithfully yours,
Document Copy Text Source: George C. Marshall Papers, Pentagon Office Collection, General Materials, George C. Marshall Research Library, Lexington, Virginia.
Document Format: Typed letter.
1. In the Library of Congress auditorium, on the morning of October 20, Marshall had given some four hundred members of the House of Representatives a briefing on the world military situation. He was the keynote speaker in the War Department's three-hour presentation. Celler, a New York Democrat, had written: "I was indeed very much impressed with your statement this morning. . . . I am sure that I and my Colleagues will back you to the hilt." (Celler to Marshall, October 20, 1943, GCMRL/G. C. Marshall Papers [Pentagon Office, General].) The New York Times reported that there had been considerable praise for Marshall's forty-minute off-the-record presentation which, one congressman noted, "debunked a lot of optimism." (New York Times, October 21, 1943, pp. 1, 4.) On the afternoon of October 21, the Senate was offered the same program. See Secretary Stimson's comments on the presentations, October 20–21, 1943, Yale/H. L. Stimson Papers [Diary, 44: 210–11, 213–14].)
Recommended Citation: The Papers of George Catlett Marshall, ed. Larry I. Bland and Sharon Ritenour Stevens (Lexington, Va.: The George C. Marshall Foundation, 1981– ). Electronic version based on The Papers of George Catlett Marshall, vol. 4, “Aggressive and Determined Leadership,” June 1, 1943–December 31, 1944 (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 164.