861.014/245½
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Under Secretary of State (Welles)21
The Polish Ambassador called to see me this afternoon at his request.
The Ambassador handed me a formal note, which is attached herewith,22 protesting against the circulation in the United States by the American Russian Institute of a map recently published in the Soviet Union and sent to the United States for distribution, which showed the frontiers of Russia as the frontiers established by the German Soviet accord of 1939. The Ambassador insisted that this map had been published since the Polish-Soviet treaty and that, therefore, the circulation of this map could only be construed as an indication of the intention of the Soviet Government to persuade the United States people that the said boundaries were the legitimate boundaries of the Soviet Union. I said that due consideration would be given to this communication from the Ambassador.
- Some 13 months later this memorandum reached the Office of the Geographer, Mr. Samuel W. Boggs. In a memorandum of his own “for the sake of the record,” on September 20, 1943, Mr. Boggs noted that “the map to which the protest relates was not ‘published in the Soviet Union and sent to the United States for distribution’ but was printed in the United States by C. S. Hammond and Company, New York, for the American-Russian Institute, 56 West 45th Street, New York.”↩
- Not printed.↩