741.60c/43: Telegram
The Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Kennedy) to the Secretary of State
[Received March 31—noon.]
425. The Prime Minister this afternoon will answer the following question in the following manner:
“Question. To ask the Prime Minister whether he can now make a statement as to the European situation.
Answer. As I said this morning His Majesty’s Government have no official confirmation of the rumors of any projected attack on Poland and they must not therefore be taken as accepting them as true.
I am glad to take this opportunity of stating again the general policy of His Majesty’s Government. They have constantly advocated the adjustment, by way of free negotiations between the parties concerned, of any differences that may arise between them. They consider that this is the natural and proper course where differences exist. In their opinion there should be no question incapable of solution by peaceful means and they would see no justification for the substitution of force or threat of force for the method of negotiation.
As the House is aware, certain consultations are now proceeding with other governments. In order to make perfectly clear the position of His Majesty’s Government in the meantime before those consultations are concluded, I now have to inform the House that during that period in the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence, and which the Polish Government accordingly considered it vital to resist with their national forces, His Majesty’s Government would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish Government all support in their power. They have given the Polish Government an assurance to this effect.
I may add that the French Government have authorized me to make it plain that they stand in the same position in this matter as do His Majesty’s Government.”
I asked Cadogan76 whether this meant if Poland fights Britain fights. He said of course if Poland itself committed an act of aggression it would not mean that but for the first time in the history of [Page 106] Great Britain the latter has left the final decision as to their fighting outside of their own country to the other power.
I asked Cadogan could there be any hedging on the part of Great Britain as to whether Poland was fighting for “Polish independence”; he said absolutely not; that if Poland thought that any gesture of Germany’s threatened their independence and they themselves are the judges of that, Great Britain commits itself to fight.
- Sir Alexander Cadogan, British Permanent Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.↩