859B.01/266
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Assistant Secretary of State (Berle)
The Danish Minister77 came in today, at his request. He asked whether the Havana agreement had any effect on Greenland.78 I said that Greenland was one of the European colonies within the hemisphere; that I construed the Act of Havana and the Convention as applying to it, though, I added, the other American Republics did not have any very vivid interest in the Greenland problem.
The Minister asked what test would indicate whether “change of control” not amounting to formal change of sovereignty would give rise to action under the Act of Havana. I said that I did not think [Page 252] we could set up any tests: it turned on facts in each case, and particularly on whether the use of the control amounted to an actual change in the real sovereignty, or to a threat to the peace and security of the continent.
- Henrik de Kauffmann.↩
- For correspondence regarding the situation in Greenland, see vol. ii, pp. 352 ff.↩