Telegram from Field Marshal Jan Smuts [Prime Minister of South Africa] to WSC marked "most secret and personal" opposing the plan by the United States to give priority to aircraft production for their own units: states that South Africa has thousands of trained men who only await aircraft; claims that South Africa needs aircraft for coastal defence and that politically it would be impossible to hand this task over to American units; offers to cable Franklin Roosevelt [President of the United States] to explain the difficulties; "America cannot appreciate far reaching implications of proposed step on duration of the War".