Office of the Historian

860D.51/390½

Memorandum by President Roosevelt to the Secretary of State

Washington, January 2, 1940.

I fear we cannot make any large loan to Finland under the R. F. C. Act2 because, frankly, there is not enough security for its re-payment under the existing law.

Please speak to me, however, about the possibility of recommending to Congress3 Congressional authority for a loan based on an amount equal to what Finland has paid us on its debt since the other nations stopped paying.

F. D. R.
  1. Reconstruction Finance Corporation Act, approved January 22, 1932; 47 Stat. 5. See bracketed note regarding the press release of December 10, 1939, issued by Mr. Jesse H. Jones, Chairman of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, announcing a loan of $10,000,000, to the Finnish-American Trading Corporation, New York, N. Y., Foreign Relations, 1939, Vol. i, p. 1026.↩
  2. For information concerning the introduction of a bill in the Senate on January 8, 1940, to enable loans to be made to Finland, see ibid., p. 1030, footnote 27.↩