124.63/97a
The Assistant Secretary of State (Messersmith) to the Chargé in Austria (Wiley)
Dear Wiley: There is so much that I would like to write you about that I feel that at the best this letter will be very sketchy but there are just a few things I want to tell you for your background. First of all, let me say that words would be inadequate to tell you how I feel about developments in the Austrian and general situation and how much my heart goes out to our Austrian friends. The barbaric hordes have swept over Austria again and, while the situation must be recognized as temporarily gone, I am for one not yet sure that German domination of Austria is a permanent matter. Certainly for the present the status quo will have to be reckoned with and no one can foretell the future. I personally have had and have no illusions and think there is no doubt but that the steam roller will move on unless major developments take place in the general picture.
We are faced by some important decisions here. First of all, you can take it that there will be no change in our policy no matter what may take place elsewhere. The President and the Secretary are determined [Page 452] that we shall hold on to the line that we have taken. There will be no swerving from it in any detail. The Secretary is making a very carefully prepared speech on Thursday81 of this week before the Press Club on our foreign policy and you will get a copy of it in due course in the pouch. It should be carefully read by every member of the staff and every word in it must be carefully weighed by our people for they have been so weighed here. It should give all of our people abroad, as well as our people at home, a very clear conception of the broad lines of our policy to which we intend to adhere. I am telling you this as I think it will be interesting for you to know that we intend to stick to these principles.
Now as to the immediate future of our establishment in Vienna. We got your telegram No. 78 of March 14, 2 p.m. [a.m.] and are not making any reply for the present as decisions are involved which we do not intend to make now and you will appreciate that they are decisions of a major character. We have not recognized the puppet state of Manchukuo and have no intention of doing so for the present. We have not yet recognized Italian sovereignty over Ethiopia and, although that situation is a little different from that of Manchukuo, the basic principle is the same. Whether we will recognize what we can only see as the forcible absorption of Austria is still another question presented in a slightly different form but we may find the basic principle involved identic. Although the German Ambassador has told us here that the Austrian Legation and Consulates have been turned over to him, we have no word from the Austrian Minister. We see no reason for being in a hurry. We are studying the basic legal questions. We will have to make a decision sometime but we have not made it yet and may be long in making it, whichever way it is made. It is an important decision not only as respects our establishment but as it affects our economic relations with Austria under our trade agreements program and general most-favored-nation treatment which she is now enjoying. All these questions you will appreciate require the most careful study.
We are in a somewhat better position than some of the other Governments as we have no Minister whose status is in question and no officer assigned there who has to leave because of the change in order to avoid serious inconveniences. All of our career Foreign Service officers there have dual commissions. It is correct, I believe, as you point out in your telegram, that none of our career officers has an exequatur but you can go back to the memoranda which I made of the conversations I had sometime back with the Secretary General [Page 453] of the Austrian Foreign Office in which he made it clear that, so far as the Austrian Government is concerned, it was not interested in the question of exequaturs and did not see any reason why we should be if they were not. It was the receiving state which was principally interested in exequaturs as, so far as the sending state is concerned, the officer executes his functions under the statutes of the sending state and exequatur from the receiving state is not necessary to the legality of his acts in the sending country. The Foreign Office said that they were receiving our officers as diplomatic officers but took it for granted that they would exercise any consular functions which our Government might choose to give them. That was a matter of no concern to them and was quite agreeable to them. Of course the situation is changed through the disappearance of the Austrian Government but certainly we must take it that the new Government is taking over the obligations of the old in this respect. You can function in your capacity as Consul General and the other officers can function in their consular capacity and I am wondering whether the new authorities will question the situation, at least for the present. In any event, this is the way in which we wish you to proceed as it seems the correct way. Whenever we take any decisions in principle, you will of course be informed.
It is very important that we have a well functioning consular establishment in Vienna and I am sure that you appreciate this. The functions which you can perform so far as we are concerned as Consul General are in many respects more important even than those which you could perform as Chargé d’Affaires either before or now. You and the other officers in Vienna have a very real opportunity for public service, which I am sure you appreciate, and I know we can depend upon you all.
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Sincerely yours,
- March 17; for text of speech, see Department of State, Our Foreign Policy: Address by the Honorable Cordell Hull, Washington, March 17, 1938 (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1938).↩