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the waiter ‘looked rather nervous’ and ‘was holding aloft a creation which I eventually realized was ice-cream – which I could hardly believe because it had some night lights burning under it. He moved towards Stalin, wanting to serve Stalin first’. But since the Soviet leader was speaking the waiter paused behind him with the salver on his right shoulder. Gradually it started tipping as the ice-cream began to melt. ‘I saw this wonderful creation slipping off the salver’, says Lunghi, ‘and about to descend on Stalin, but in fact the waiter moved suddenly to the side where Pavlov, Stalin's interpreter, was sitting, and this ice-cream fell all down the shoulder of Pavlov's new uniform – which was the new Soviet diplomatic uniform – so it ruined that. But Pavlov went on interpreting quite happily. And I heard Sir Charles Portal [the head of the RAF] whisper in a loud whisper: “Missed the target,” but it was a wonderful occasion. The party broke up quite happily after that’.
    The following day, 1 December, the American and British military delegations left, leaving the politicians to discuss further – amongst other things – the potentially contentious issue of the boundaries of Germany and Poland. Originally these discussions had been scheduled to last several days, but the prospect of bad weather that might affect their flight plans made the leaders decide that they would attempt to resolve any difficulties during this one day and leave the next.
    Roosevelt later revealed that by this fourth day of the conference he was ‘pretty discouraged’. He felt he had still not made the ‘personal connection with Stalin’ that he craved. Stalin, he felt, was ‘correct, stiff, solemn, not smiling, nothing human to get hold of’.So on the morning of 1 December, the American President hit on a new tactic: he would ingratiate himself with Stalin by insulting Churchill. ‘On my way to the conference room that morning I caught up with Winston and I had just a moment to say to him: “Winston, I hope you won't be sore at me for what I am going to do”. Winston just shifted his cigar and grunted. I must say he behaved very decently afterwards. I began almost as soon as we got into the conference room. I talked privately with Stalin. I didn't say anything that I hadn't said before, but it appeared quite chummy and confidential, enough so that the other Russians joined us to listen. Still no smile. Then I said, lifting my hand up to cover a whisper (which of course had to be interpreted): “Winston is cranky this morning, he got up on the wrong side of bed”. A vague smile passed over Stalin's eyes, and I decided I was on the right track’. 29 Roosevelt carried on teasing Churchill – ‘about his Britishness, about John Bull, about his cigars, about his habits’ – and the Prime Minister was visibly discomfited. Eventually Stalin started laughing. This, Roosevelt believed, meant that he and the Soviet leader could talk for the first time ‘like men and brothers’. So much so that he subsequently told his son, Elliott Roosevelt, that he both liked Stalin and found him ‘altogether quite impressive’. 30
    Now that Roosevelt felt he had established the all-important personal connection with Stalin, he was not anxious to prolong the official talks. Stalin had already agreed to enter the war against Japan once Germany was defeated, and also to cooperate – albeit so far only in general terms – with Roosevelt's vision for the United Nations. Alongside these massive gains for the American President, the prospect of poring over maps and discussing exact boundaries seemed not only laborious but potentially divisive.
    The first official meeting on 1 December discussed – somewhat inconclusively – the question of how to try to force Turkey into the war, and then the extent of reparations to be demanded from Finland once the war was over. Stalin, true to form, said that as regards the Finns he would be