760C.61/2087: Telegram
The Ambassador to the Polish Government in Exile (Biddle) to the Secretary of State
[Received 9:58 p.m.]
Polish Series [No.] 57. Your 16, July 19, 6 p.m., regarding a proposed approach to the Soviet authorities in connection with Polish-Russian relations, and my 55, August 12, 4 p.m.23 reporting having informed Foreign Minister Romer of the foregoing.
Minister Romer wishes me to express his and his Government’s profound appreciation of this very friendly and constructive move on our part. He states that his Government finds the proposals in our approach acceptable in principle, but that it is apprehensive lest difficulties be encountered (a) regarding the control of the distribution of welfare, which his Government feels should, in justice to all categories of Polish refugees concerned, be either under the Polish Embassy in event of reestablishment of Polish-Russian relations, or under the Australian or other Allied Mission; (b) in defining the difference between racial and non-racial Poles; and (c) regarding the mention, in connection with the latter, of “Poles who opt for Polish citizenship”. This, it was felt, might raise the frontier question.
Romer pointed out that the foregoing were in effect his Government’s preliminary reactions to the proposals concerned. His Government would, in event of a favorable attitude on part of M. Stalin, inform us more definitely of its views in regard to these proposals.
Romer wanted us to know that he had requested postponement of today’s National Council meeting at which he was to have delivered his first formal statement of Polish foreign affairs. He had done this, he said, in order to avoid the risk of giving the Russians any possible pretext for antagonism at this stage of our conversations in Moscow.
- Not printed.↩