760C.61/2–1743
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Under Secretary of State (Welles)
The Polish Ambassador called to see me this morning at his request.
The Ambassador told me that he wished to report to me his conversation yesterday with the President when the President received him in order that he might make reply to the messages sent to the President by General Sikorski regarding the recent action of the Soviet Government in declaring all Polish refugees within Soviet territory to be Soviet nationals.
The Ambassador said that the President, as always, had received him most sympathetically and had expressed the desire of this Government to do anything it could to be of help. The President had stated, however, that the matter would have to be handled very carefully inasmuch as the President was unwilling to take any action which could be misconstrued as an interference on the part of this Government in domestic questions in the Soviet Union.
The President had stated that he would immediately consult Mr. Churchill as to the possibility of some friendly joint representations being made by the British and American Governments.
The Ambassador then said that the President had asked him if he had any suggestions. The Ambassador had replied that he felt that, in the first place, this Government had recently, as had the [Page 334] British Government, taken too much the position that it was anxious to find out what the Soviet Government planned to do, and that a better trading position would be for this Government to maintain the position that its own policy with regard to principles was unalterable, thus creating a “stone wall” against which the Soviet Government would knock its head and be obliged, on Soviet initiative, to ask for an opportunity of discussion with the British and American Governments.
The Ambassador said further to the President that on several occasions either the President or responsible officials of this Government had publicly stated that the United States would not recognize territorial changes brought about by force and that it would enter into no commitments with regard to territorial changes during the war, believing that such adjustments should be solved at the end of the war. The Ambassador had said that if the President would now reiterate this statement in a public manner it would create the kind of a situation in which the Soviet Government would be obliged to come to us rather than for us to go to the Soviet Government. The Ambassador said the President had asked him to discuss this with me and to make specific suggestions as to what should be said.
I told the Ambassador that I would be very glad to look up the references which he had in mind and then lay the matter before the President for his further consideration.