File No. 411.57N83/105
The Commercial Adviser of the British Embassy ( Crawford) to the Counselor for the Department of State ( Polk)
[Received December 4.]
Dear Mr. Counsellor: The question of the validity of our Norwegian Tonnage Agreement has so often been alluded to in our conversations, that I think you will be interested in the following information:
You will remember telling me of the frequent statements of Doctor Nansen that this agreement did not definitely tie the hands of the Norwegian Government. I did not like to pass this information on to the Foreign Office for fear that any recriminations between ourselves and the Norwegian Government might prejudice your negotiations here, but, just before he left, Mr. Meling, the shipping representative on Doctor Nansen’s mission, made a similar statement to the Embassy in a very categorical way. I then felt justified in informing the Foreign Office of the statements made by Doctor Nansen’s mission and the Foreign Office instructed the British Minister in Christiania to enquire of the Norwegian Government whether these statements were authorized.
On receiving these enquiries, the Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs categorically denied to Sir M. Findlay1 any knowledge of such statements and said that he could not understand how they could possibly have been made. He stated that he regarded the tonnage agreement as a contract binding both sides.
This definite admission will, I hope, now finally dispel any doubt that may have arisen.
Believe me [etc.]
- British Minister to Norway.↩