740.00115 European War 1939/1630

The Secretary of State to the Greek Minister (Diamantopoulos)

Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your note no. 3673 of December 18, 1941, stating that numerous persons of Greek race from the Dodecanese Islands have entered the United States as Italian subjects and requesting the Department’s approval of the Legation’s practice of issuing identification papers to them with a view to obtaining for them the most lenient treatment possible under the laws and regulations applying to enemy aliens in the United States.

I shall be pleased to inform the Secretary of War and the Attorney General concerning the status of such persons of Greek race and to request that your wishes with respect to them be given sympathetic consideration.

The Department would not wish to express approval or disapproval of the actions of a foreign mission at Washington in issuing identifying documents to persons considered by the mission to be entitled to them. It is the Department’s understanding, in the present instance, that such documents would be intended and so worded as to indicate only the Greek race and sympathies of the persons to whom the Legation would issue them, and that they would contain no statement that might be construed as bestowing Greek nationality upon persons not already Greek subjects. The Department also assumes that no such document would be issued to a person entitled to claim American nationality.

Accept [etc.]

For the Secretary of State:
Breckinridge Long