A few minutes after Thomsen sent that cable, Churchill received the news from Lord Halifax that Roosevelt was unable to commit to a meeting until early January and would prefer that it take place in Bermuda, rather than the United States, “on security grounds.”2 Clearly, the president was trying to put some distance between himself and the prime minister, at least until relations with Hitler had been sorted out. It was already evident that Pearl Harbor alone was not enough to cement the US-Britain partnership.
