War & Peace Quote by W. Averell Harriman

Averell Harriman’s sentence performs the classic statesman’s two-step: hint at decisive foresight while keeping the receipts just out of reach. “Telegrams that may or may not be available” is less a factual qualifier than a strategic fog machine. It signals that documentary proof exists somewhere in the archival ether, while pre-emptively disarming anyone who might ask to see it. In a world of memos, cables, and bureaucratic paper trails, unproduced evidence functions as authority-by-implication: trust me, the record would vindicate me.

The real aim is reputational positioning. Harriman, a key U.S. envoy and power broker in the wartime alliance, is talking about the pivot from Lend-Lease (wartime supply) to postwar reconstruction aid, the political lineage that culminates in the Marshall Plan. By saying he “very much had in mind” the “need to give Europe substantial aid,” he’s claiming early moral and strategic clarity: that American obligation didn’t end when the shooting stopped, and that stability required cash, goods, and institutional support.

The subtext is that this wasn’t inevitable. Postwar aid was contested: isolationist instincts lingered, domestic priorities competed, and resentment over European dependence was real. Harriman’s phrasing casts him as someone already fighting that battle inside the U.S. state, nudging policy toward internationalism. The hedged, lawyerly cadence also betrays the memoirist’s anxiety: history is written not only by victors, but by those who can cite the right cables. He’s trying to win the footnote war without producing the footnote.