840.48/3283: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Chargé in the United Kingdom (Johnson)
284. The Department of State has read with regret your No. 386, February 14, 6 p.m.9 conveying a message from the Ministry of Economic Warfare to the American Red Cross which informs that the Committee on Economic Warfare declines to relent in the execution of its policies which intercept, delay and may prevent the supplies of American relief organizations from reaching the stricken areas in Europe and particularly of Poland.
You are requested to present the matter to the Foreign Office of the British Government and to invite their attention to the objective which has inspired the American people to make generous donations in the form of supplies to aid the sufferers from the war which so unhappily rages in Europe, which supplies are tendered the victims of that war irrespective of race, nationality or religion but the effectuation of which will in large measure be frustrated in the first instance if the policy of the Economic Warfare Committee of the British Government is persisted in.
The American Government feels that the right of its citizens to send medical and other related supplies to victims of war should not be interfered with by the British Government or such interference predicated by that Government on policy which the German Government may adopt in the premises.
The American Government has instructed its Chargé d’Affaires at Berlin to make representations to the German Government to permit certain supervision of distribution of the supplies on the ground that the American people are entitled to have definite knowledge that the supplies which they send will be distributed to the persons for whom they are intended, but it is also a prerequisite to the effectuation of these desires of the American people that the supplies which they send shall in the first instance reach the stricken areas.
You will please present this matter to the Foreign Office in the light that this representation is made by the American Government on behalf [Page 754] not only of the Red Cross but also of the Polish Relief Commission and the Joint Distribution Committee of the Jewish Charities and other legitimate charitable organizations which have been registered as provided by the laws of the American Government and authorized by the Department of State to solicit funds to be used for the purchase and distribution of relief supplies and is based upon the generous impulse of the American people and on the humanitarian sympathies of the American Government.
Repeat to Berlin for its confidential information.
- Not printed.↩