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The Secretary of State to President Roosevelt
My Dear Mr. President: The Polish Ambassador has called at the Department twice to discuss the proposed United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. In the course of his conversations with Mr. Acheson he has stated that he has received a very definite impression from the statements of American officials, in public addresses and elsewhere, that food and other relief supplies are to be used as a political weapon or influence in European countries after they are liberated.
The Ambassador referred particularly to your conversation with the Prime Minister of Poland and to a conversation between Governor Lehman and General Sikorski.71 Since the Ambassador served as interpreter in both of these cases he felt that he had a clear understanding of the statements made on those occasions. His very definite impression was that it would be the policy of this Government to use “food as a weapon” in restoring political order in Europe, and he interpreted that to mean backing for certain leaders or governments and denial of support to others.
After checking with Governor Lehman the Department has assured the Polish Ambassador in very definite terms that Governor Lehman intended to leave no such impression and that his own position is emphatically quite the opposite. The Ambassador has been told that Governor Lehman has used the phrase “food as a weapon” [Page 930] only with respect to the prosecution of the war and the support of morale in the occupied countries through the promise of relief to those areas when liberated.
I believe that you will consider it desirable to have this impression definitely corrected, especially since one of the Polish Ambassador’s colleagues from London has reported that the same impression is current there. If you approve, the Department will take occasion to inform the Polish Ambassador, and any others who have so misinterpreted our intentions, (a) that no responsible official of this Government has intended, by reference to food as a weapon, to indicate that food and other relief will in any way be used as a political weapon, and (b) that it was the intention of this Government in drafting the proposed agreement, and that it will be the intention of this Government so far as it can affect the administration of the agreement once it is adopted, to provide for the distribution of relief supplies on the basis of need alone and for the administration of the relief and rehabilitation program on an impartial and non-political basis.
Faithfully yours,
- Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski, Polish Prime Minister and Commander in Chief of the Polish Armies. Regarding his visit to the United States, see vol. iii, pp. 314–321 and 346.↩