840.48 Refugees/4722: Telegram
The Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Winant) to the Secretary of State
[Received 6:25 p.m.]
7565. In accordance with Department’s 6549, October 20, midnight,81 we informed the Foreign Office by letter dated October 21 [Page 216] and have now received the following reply from the Foreign Office dated October 29, seeking the Department’s agreement to certain instructions:
“Thank you for your letter of the 21st October informing me of your Government’s reactions to the present impasse which the affair of the declaration to neutrals has reached.
We agree that the word ‘now’ should be omitted from the last sentence of the second paragraph of the draft declaration, and also that we should not press the Soviet Government to agree to the issue of the declaration. At the same time, however, the considerable fresh influx of refugees into Sweden and Switzerland seems to make it advisable that we should not await the Soviet Government’s concurrence before informing at least those governments whose refugees are now burdening the neutral countries that we hope to arrange in due course for the issue of an Allied declaration. Subject, therefore, to the agreement of the State Department, we should like to instruct our representatives to the Polish, Czechoslovak, Yugoslav, Greek, Norwegian, Belgian and Netherlands Governments to inform orally the Governments to which they are accredited of the step we hope to take. I hardly think we can withhold this information much longer.”
- See footnote 80, above.↩