For the Prime Minister.

Your telegram to Dominions Office 12 of January 11th. [1]

Reply is being sent in the immediate future [2], preceded by two
telegrams giving further information with regard to Yugoslavia and
Greece. [3]

The reply sets out the position from the United Kingdom point of
view and in reading it one has to bear in mind their
embarrassments, owing to the commitments entered into in the early
days of the war.

Your telegram has had a most admirable effect here in forcing
consideration of the issues you raise and crystallizing thought
upon them. Personally, I greatly welcomed the telegram and I hope
you will take similar action from time to time in the future.

One personal thought with regard to the countries you deal with is
that in them democracy must carry the significance that the will
of the people must prevail as to the type of Government they have,
and not the significance of parliamentary government in accordance
with our ideas which is so often attached to it in British
countries.

The real hope I see for the three countries you deal with in your
telegram is the emergence of outstanding men who it would be the
will of the majority of the people should be placed in authority.

How they exercise that authority must, I am afraid, be left to the
individual peculiarities of the nations concerned.

Yugoslavia appears to be the only one of these countries where an
outstanding man has emerged in the person of Tito. [4] No such man
has yet appeared in Italy or Greece.

BRUCE