760F.62/1074: Telegram
The Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Kennedy) to the Secretary of State
[Received September 25—4:30 p.m.]
1018. My 1003, September 23, 4 p.m.74 The Polish Ambassador, Count Edward Raczynski, called on me this afternoon to outline to [Page 653] me the present Polish situation and to find out from me, if he possibly could, just what England was contemplating doing; in my opinion the latter reason really caused him to come. The strategy depends to a great extent on what England intends doing and they want if possible to get as much information in advance as they can.
First of all he said that the Poles consider their claim to Silesia dates back much farther than the German claim to the Sudeten area and that the only reason that the Germans are getting prior consideration is because they are much stronger. They asked France last week what would be done with Silesia and were told that France was trying to keep peace in the world and for them to wait a little while and they would be taken care of. The same question was put up to the English. He said the English were more honest but gave them very little satisfaction, telling them to appeal under section 19 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. The result of these two talks has forced them more or less to be a sort of “little cousin” of Hitler. Beck telephoned to the Ambassador from Warsaw that he had seen the Hitler message and that Hitler had very cunningly declined to guarantee the boundaries of the Czech State unless the Poles and Hungarians came along, by this method rather indicating that he intended they should get their piece of pie. They do not enjoy being put in this position but nevertheless if that is the way they are going to get what they want they are going to play. A further reason why they are anxious to find out what England is going to do is they say if it is to be peace their claim will be adjusted and they will get what they want; if it is to be war then they have to be very careful. I told him I could not help him at all.
He told me that in a conversation between the Rumanian Minister for Foreign Affairs and Litvinoff, Litvinoff had said that Russia did not want to go through Rumania in the event of trouble with Czechoslovakia but that later on Litvinoff expected that they would all be in it together on the same side and then the march through would be okay. The Rumanian added of course that they would not mind a few planes flying over their country so it looks as though that would not be very hard for Russia to work out. I asked him about the Hungarian situation. He said the British had sent for the Hungarian [sic] to ask about the calling up of their army. The Minister called Budapest and they told him they were gathering soldiers because of the terrific number of refugees that were coming in and the British accepted this. Raczynski said that on the whole the Hungarians would probably be afraid to do anything because they had a lot of hostile feeling around them and they wanted to be awfully sure before they took action. He also added casually that some high officials in the French Government told him that the way they viewed the problem [Page 654] was that England would make the decision and the French would have to do the lighting. I do not know anything about Polish propaganda but it looks to me like this was an attempt to sell me this whole story for some reason. You will probably know what it is when you get it.
- Not printed.↩