File No. 860c.48/12
The Secretary of State to President Wilson
My Dear Mr. President: In November you authorized the continuance of monetary relief to the destitute in occupied Poland and [Page 527] also to the subject races in Turkey, but the question of the amount of the relief funds to be transmitted has never definitely been fixed, either by the War Trade Board or by the Department of State.
I enclose a brief report for the period from November, 1917, to March, 1918, inclusive, which illustrates the amounts which the War Trade Board has licensed to forward to both Poland and Turkey. The February and March remittances have, however, not all been transmitted as yet. It is deemed desirable to set a limit, if possible, on the monthly remittances. At the present rate at which we are asked to transmit money to Poland, the annual total would not be less than $8,500,000, taking $700,000 as the monthly average. For Turkey, not under British occupation, the annual remittances would total between four and five millions.
It seems to me that these amounts are altogether too high and that we should limit the funds for Poland not to exceed $300,000 per month—$200,000 to be for general relief and $100,000 for individual remittances. An appropriate figure for Armenian and Syrian relief might be placed at $150,000 per month, most of which is for general relief.
The Polish Relief Committee, the Joint Distribution Committee, and the other organizations will naturally criticize the limiting of these relief funds as these charitable organizations are deeply interested in getting as much relief as possible to the destitute in those countries, and they have very large resources in the United States upon which to draw for this purpose. I believe, however, it is the duty of the Government, in view of recent military developments in Russia and Turkey, to restrict the amounts sent to those countries for relief purposes.
I should be grateful for an expression of your views on this question, and, if you approve of the limiting of the remittances, whether you think it advisable to make the limit retroactive so as to include certain of the sums totalling about $1,500,000, which have not yet actually gone forward but for which licenses have been granted by the War Trade Board.
In this connection it should be pointed out that, to supplement this monetary relief, it is proposed to permit second-hand clothing to be purchased in neutral European countries and shipped to Poland for the relief of the destitute.
I am [etc.]