700.00116 M.E./292
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Under Secretary of State (Welles)
The Soviet Ambassador called to see me by arrangement this afternoon.
I told the Ambassador that I was happy to be able to say to him, by direction of the President, that I was authorized to address a letter to him in the terms we had discussed in our previous meeting and that this letter would, after being delivered to him, be given to the press in this country for publication. I said that inasmuch as the action taken was entirely unilateral, there was no reason for the publication by this Government of any reply which the Ambassador might care to make to the letter which I intended addressing to him. I then handed him the letter, in the form agreed upon, with my signature affixed.
The Ambassador seemed to be somewhat embarrassed inasmuch as he had specifically agreed to the text proposed in our previous conversation. He said that he had received a cable of instructions from his Government and that, by personal direction of Mr. Molotov, he was instructed to request that the phraseology agreed upon be modified so as to omit all reference to the bombing of civilians from the air, which, in the judgment of his Government, brought up memories which were exceedingly unpleasant for the Soviet Government inasmuch as that Government denied the authenticity of the reports upon which the extension of the moral embargo to the Soviet Union had been undertaken by the Government of the United States. He furthermore requested very urgently that the last sentence of the proposed letter should not read “will be communicated” but “is being communicated” in order to avoid the impression being created that such information would only be communicated by the Department of State to interested manufacturers within the United States at some time in the indefinite future.
[Page 690]I stated to the Ambassador that I must frankly say that I was surprised to receive this request from him since I had clearly understood in our previous conversation that he was duly authorized to agree upon a text. I said that this statement on my part obviously did not imply that any agreement on his part was required inasmuch as the action taken was purely unilateral and for that reason did not need any agreement from the Soviet Government. I said, however, that it was naturally my desire, in dealing with this question, to deal with it in a manner which was entirely satisfactory to both Governments, and that I consequently would tentatively accept the changes he had requested with two provisions: (1) that before I signed the letter in the phraseology now suggested, he inform me specifically that his Government had no further suggestions to make; and (2) that the phraseology suggested was as acceptable to the Secretary of State as the language employed in the original draft. To this Mr. Oumansky agreed.