These letters cover the period leading up to the outbreak of war in September 1939 and the eventual US entry into the war in December 1941. It opens with Walter Runciman's visit to Washington beginning on 23 January 1937. There was some publicity about the visit but the official story was that he was staying with relatives and might also be seeing the President. Roosevelt and Runciman had a wide-ranging discussion about trade, war debts, the American neutrality laws and the international situation in general. The visit was therefore very important in bilateral relations and owed much to Roosevelt's friendship with Murray and his penchant for informal diplomacy. One of its effects was to convince Runciman of the need for good relations, and he therefore supported the idea of an Anglo-American trade agreement in a major speech in the House of Commons on 25 May 1937.A few days later Stanley Baldwin resigned as Prime Minister and was succeeded by Neville Chamberlain. In the resulting reshuffle Runciman resigned and took a seat in the House of Lords. Murray wrote to Roosevelt immediately after Runciman's resignation, explaining the circumstances surrounding it and saying that Runciman hoped that the President would not feel that the progress they had made towards closer relations would be undone. Roosevelt replied, voicing his disappointment that Runciman had gone but adding "I am confident that the good work that he started will go on" (Roosevelt to Murray, 17 June 1937). In fact, Roosevelt proceeded to invite Chamberlain to visit the USA, but the new PM replied that the time was not yet right.In October 1938, shortly after the Munich agreement, Murray and his wife paid another visit, this time to the Roosevelt family home in Hyde Park. They talked over the European situation, and the President stressed the need for Britain and France to improve their airpower, adding that, in the event of war, he would do his best to provide the basic materials for aircraft that did not come within the scope of the arms embargo. He also asked Murray to deliver a confidential message in person to Chamberlain - an indication, perhaps, of his lack of confidence in his ambassador to London, Joseph Kennedy. Roosevelt said he wanted the British PM to feel that he had "the industrial resources of the American nation behind him in the event of war with the dictatorships" (Note of conversation between Roosevelt and Murray, 23 Oct 1938).When Murray returned to London at the end of November, he saw Lord Halifax, Eden's replacement at the Foreign Office, and reported his talks with the President. Chamberlain was not keen to see Murray but, on Halifax's advice, eventually did so on 14 December in the Prime Minister's room at the House of Commons, where Murray passed on the President's message. Murray then wrote to Roosevelt saying that Chamberlain had "asked me to tell you that he was immensely grateful to you for all that you had done and were doing, not only by your very powerful messages to Hitler at the time of the crisis, but generally by your exceedingly sympathetic and helpful attitude throughout these trying times" (Murray to Roosevelt, 15 Dec 1938).Murray had planned to visit Roosevelt again in 1939 but the outbreak of war prevented it. Although they often wrote of the President vacationing with Murray in Scotland once he had retired, the two men did not meet again. After Chamberlain resigned in May 1940, Murray's role as a go-between was much diminished. Churchill had his own direct line of communication with the President, dating from Roosevelt's message to him on 11 September 1939 that began their famous wartime correspondence. One of Churchill's many critics in the past, Murray sometimes warned Roosevelt against Churchill's judgements during the War. For example, he told Roosevelt that Churchill was thinking of appointing Lord Beaverbrook, the newspaper publisher, as British Ambassador to Washington - an idea that filled Murray with horror (Murray to Roosevelt, 22 Apr 1943).