340.1115A/2402: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Chargé in Switzerland (Huddle)
274. Reference your 221,18 paragraphs 1 and 12. Department has been pleased to note that Swiss Government is requesting its representatives to make emergency relief payments to destitute Americans and also to submit estimates and other data for relief purposes.
President Quezon having acquiesced in Department’s stated willingness to extend financial assistance to needy Filipinos on same basis as to American citizens, please ask Swiss Government to inform its representatives that the Department desires that such emergency relief payments be made similarly to needy Filipinos in enemy or enemy occupied areas outside the Philippine Islands able to produce evidence of Philippine citizenship in the form of an American passport, or a certificate of registration issued by an American Consular officer.
The Department desires that the emergency relief extended to both American and Filipino nationals shall be limited to minimum necessary for ordinary subsistence and essential extraordinary needs such as urgent medical attention and in no case may the scale of relief be such as to enable recipients to enjoy proportionately a higher standard of living than that to which they would ordinarily be accustomed.