740.00112 European War 1939/9043: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Winant)
4787. Your 5165, August 6, 9 p.m. Revised aide-mémoire is approved. Our understanding, however, is that Swedish Government has consistently maintained the position that it could not sign the economic agreement until transit traffic had ceased, not as would be implied from the first sentence of paragraph numbered 2 of your draft aide-mémoire immediately after the public announcement that the transit traffic would be stopped. Accordingly, we suggest that the word “now” in the first sentence of paragraph 2 be deleted and the words “very shortly after August 20” be added to this sentence. Correspondingly, word “now” in last sentence of paragraph 2 should also be deleted.
We hope that the British will agree to this amendment and that aide-mémoire can be delivered to the Swedes at the earliest possible moment.
We think it inadvisable to attempt at this time to define what position we will adopt with respect to future developments.
We would be interested to know the reasons for omitting from the revised aide-mémoire the sense of the first sentence of paragraph 6 of your original draft.88 As indicated in our 4629, July 31, we attached considerable importance to that point.