Arab-jewish Question Discussed with Arab Ruler, Roosevelt Reports to Congress

President Roosevelt, reporting to a joint session of Congres today on the “Big Three” conference in the Crimea, revealed that be discussed the Arab-Jewish question during his talk in Egypt with King Ibn Saud, ruler of Saudi Arabia.

The President made no specific reference to Palestine in his address, but he deviated from the prepared text, when discussing his meeting with the ruler of Saudi Arabia, to state: “For instance, on the problems of Arabia – I learned more about the whole problem, the Moslems – the Jewish problem – by talking with Ibn Saud for five minutes than I could have learned in the exchange of two or three dozen letters.”

The president declared that his conversations with the kings of Saudi Arabia and of Egypt “had to do with matters of common interest. They will be of great mutual advantage because they gave us an opportunity of meeting and talking face to face and of exchanging views in personal conversation instead of formal correspondence.”

The President emphasized that Nazi war criminals will be severely and speedily punished and that tolerance and freedom of religion will be guaranteed in the post-war world. “Unconditional surrender for Germany,” he stated, “means the and of Nazism and of the Nazi party — and all of its barbaric laws and institutions. It means for the Nazi war criminals a punishement that is speedy and just — and severe. It means that Germany will have to make reparations in kind for the damage which it has done to the innocent victims of its aggression.”

The structure of world peace can and will be a peace, he told the nation, “based on the sound and just principles of the Atlantic Charter — on the conception of the dignity of human beings — on the guarantees of tolerance and freedom of worship.”