711.61/912a: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Standley)
773. In connection with press reports of Mr. Welles’ resignation as Under Secretary,75 there has been in certain newspapers here an attempt to attribute his resignation to a difference in opinion on policy in regard to the Soviet Union. This campaign has charged the Department of State with anti-Soviet views and has culminated in Drew Pearson’s column in the Washington Post76 which asserted that if Mr. Welles left there would be no one in the State Department who was sincerely interested in the development of good relations with the Soviet Union.
In view of the obviously harmful nature of such deliberately false statements, I took occasion on August 27 during a call by the Soviet Chargé d’Affaires to draw his attention to the Pearson article. I said that while, of course, the utter untruth of such statements was well known to the officials of both our Governments, nevertheless they might have an injurious effect upon the attitude of uninformed persons in the United States, in the Soviet Union and in other countries where they might be circulated. I added that deliberately false statements of this character would be sure to be seized upon by our enemies and broadcast widely throughout Europe for the purpose of arousing misunderstanding and suspicion between our countries. I referred to my statement at the press conference on that day which you will have seen in the radio bulletin concerning the pernicious effect of this type of false publicity which was little more than the lending of aid and comfort to the enemy. I told the Chargé d’Affaires that I knew that the officials of both our Governments who were working together so wholeheartedly in the prosecution of the war will use every opportunity to expose and correct all such malicious and harmful untruths as were contained in the Pearson article which would only be designed to create suspicion and disturb the friendly relations between our two countries.
Mr. Gromyko showed himself to be in sympathy with the tenure [tenor] of my remarks and readily agreed with me that our two Governments should make every effort to expose and correct false and infamous statements designed to injure our relations. He also agreed with my statement that the officials of both our Governments, and [Page 571] particularly those handling foreign affairs, are doing everything possible to promote and preserve the cordial and friendly relations now existing between our two countries and to continue on the basis of the fullest cooperation in the prosecution of the war.
I hope you will find occasion during your conversations with Soviet officials, and in particular with Molotov, to discuss this question along the above lines.77
For your information, in view of the continuance of false and harmful statements regarding Soviet-American relations in certain sections of the press, at my press conference today I authorized the following statement for direct quotation:
“I do not ordinarily take notice of attacks made either on the State Department or myself. When these attacks, however, concern our relations with an Allied government, I must take notice of them. I am informed that recently Drew Pearson published over the radio and in the press the charge that I and other high officials in the State Department are opposed to the Soviet Government and that we actually wish the Soviet Union to be bled white. I desire to brand these statements as monstrous and diabolical falsehoods.”
I referred the attention of the correspondents to a statement I had made last Friday78 to the generally harmful and destructive effect of malicious and untrue statements concerning the relations of this Government with our Allies and said that I had hoped that that general observation would be heeded by the few commentators and correspondents who were inclined to overlook the harm done to our foreign relations by such statements.
- Formal announcement of the resignation of Sumner Welles was not made by the White House to the press until September 25 (see Department of State Bulletin, September 25, 1943, p. 208), although his resignation, together with an explanatory letter, was submitted to the President on August 16. An account of the circumstances of the resignation is presented in The Memoirs of Cordell Bull, vol. ii, pp. 1227–1231, 1256.↩
- Issue for August 27, 1943.↩
- Ambassador Standley had an opportunity on September 7 to discuss the content of this telegram with Assistant People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs Vyshinsky.↩
- August 27.↩