026 Foreign Relations/1370: Telegram
The Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Kennedy) to the Secretary of State
[Received June 13—2:25 p.m.]
507. Your instruction No. 2147 of February 14, 1938. Following informal letter just received from the Foreign Office:
“I can now give a definite reply to one of the two letters you wrote to me on April 19th.
I have consulted Sir Maurice Hankey and we agree that we need have no objection to the period after which the State Department publishes diplomatic and other documents being reduced from 15 to 7 years on the understanding that you will continue as before to send us such of our documents as they wish to publish and will accept our decision if we ask for any of them to be omitted.
The State Department has no doubt already faced the fact that the reduction of this period of ‘lag’ may lead to other countries requesting the omission of a rather larger number of documents than hitherto. I think, however, you will agree that we are not generally unreasonable.”
Copies of the correspondence are being forwarded by pouch.28
- Despatch No. 523, June 13, not printed.↩