File No. 861.48/329
The Ambassador in Great Britain ( Page ) to the Secretary of State
[Received 11 p.m.]
6570. Your 5012, June 18, 5 p.m. Lengthy note just received from Foreign Office giving answer in extenso to your inquiries which I shall forward by mail leaving tomorrow.
British Government have no knowledge of the transmission recently of large sum you mention from British sources to the Vevey Committee and hope that you will endeavor to obtain details of sources from which these funds are said to have come. Only sum authorized recently for this Committee is one of a few hundred pounds sent by the Polish Victims’ Relief Fund in this country for the erection in Switzerland of a home for Polish refugee children.
British Government, at one time disposed to grant facilities freely for transmission of such funds, have now reluctantly been compelled as the result of experience to restrict them to the narrowest possible limits. It has not been possible to devise system of guarantees which will ensure that funds sent with a charitable object will in [Page 504] fact reach suffering population for whom they are intended. Moreover, receipt of money in any appreciable quantity merely acts as an incentive to the enemy authorities to impose fresh exactions, taxes, levies, or requisitions, and persons in the occupied territories are being systematically urged by the enemy authorities to make appeals to the United States and Canada for funds. But few exceptions have from time to time been made to this general principle and these are set forth in the note above referred to.