In my last message I set forth the views of the Government of the U.S.S.R. on the opening of a second front as the chief means of promoting our common cause. In reply to your message in which you reaffirm the impossibility of opening a second front at the moment, I can only repeat that its absence is playing into the hands of our common enemies.

I have no doubt that the British Government wants the Soviet Union to win and is searching for ways to attain that goal. If at the moment the opening of a second front in the West seems unfeasible to the British Government, then perhaps some other means could be found of rendering the Soviet Union active military aid against the common enemy. It seems to me that Britain could safely land 25-30 divisions at Archangel or ship them to the southern areas of the U.S.S.R. via Iran for military cooperation with the Soviet troops on Soviet soil in the same way as was done during the last war in France. That would be a great help. I think that help of this kind would be a severe blow to the Hitler aggression.

Please accept my thanks for the promise of monthly British aid in aluminium, aircraft and tanks. I can but be glad that the British Government contemplates this aid, not as a transaction of selling and buying aircraft, aluminium and tanks, but in the shape of comradely cooperation.

It is my hope that the British Government will have not a few opportunities of satisfying itself that the Soviet Government knows how to appreciate help from its Ally.

A few words about the Memorandum transmitted by British Ambassador Cripps to V. M. Molotov on September 12, 1941. The Memorandum says: "If the Soviet Government were compelled to destroy its naval vessels at Leningrad in order to prevent their falling into the enemy hands, His Majesty's Government would recognise after the war claims of the Soviet Government to a certain compensation from His Majesty's Government for the restoration of the vessels destroyed."

The Soviet Government is aware of and appreciates the British Government's readiness to compensate for part of the damage that would be caused to the Soviet Union in the event of the Soviet vessels at Leningrad being destroyed. There can be little doubt that, if necessary, Soviet people will actually destroy the ships at Leningrad. But responsibility for the damage would be borne, not by Britain but by Germany. I think, therefore, that Germany will have to make good the damage after the war.