Office of the Historian

859B.7962/23: Telegram

The Secretary of State to the Chargé in Denmark (Perkins)

Washington, March 12, 1941—6 p.m.

41. Your 73, March 3, 4 p.m. and 80, March 10, 3 p.m.7 The Danish Minister, under instructions from the Foreign Office in Copenhagen has inquired regarding the accuracy of press reports that this Government has recently declared Greenland to be a part of the Western Hemisphere and therefore within the sphere of influence of the United States and that the United States is about to establish air bases in Greenland.

With respect to the first point, we have called the Minister’s attention to the fact that as early as 1920 the Danish Government was informed that the United States did not recognize the right of a third government to acquire Greenland, should Denmark desire to dispose of that territory. (See Legation’s despatch no. 491, June 8, 1920 and pages 1 to 4, Volume II, Foreign Relations, 1922.)

[Page 40]

With respect to the second point the Minister has been told that while press reports that the United States contemplates the establishment of air bases in Greenland are purely speculative, this Government has of course for some time been committed to a policy of hemispheric defense and must consider itself free within the frame work of that policy to propose such measures as it deems to be in the interest of national or continental defense.

You may orally inform the Foreign Office in the foregoing sense.

Hull
  1. Neither printed.↩