800.796/10–2444
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Assistant Secretary of State (Berle)
The Norwegian Ambassador98c came in to see me at his request to say that he had been selected to head the Norwegian delegation to the forthcoming International Conference on Civil Aviation. He asked the general line of the Conference, and I gave him the same explanation I had given to others.
I then told him that apparently there was a disagreement between the British and ourselves as to the powers to be given an international authority. We thought that the situation was not right to be giving any international authority absolute power over vital national interests like our air routes, and I thought Norway would feel the same way about it. The Ambassador said that he thought they did and would probably support our position.
He then said that the one thing that was worrying them was the possibility that on provisional route openings, a neutral country which was ready and had planes could jump in ahead of countries which had fought the war and were not yet ready.
As he was plainly talking about Sweden, I waded right into it. I told him that I agreed with him and that if the Swedes talked to us about a route which would give them precedence over the Norwegians, [Page 570] my own suggestion would be that they get together with their Norwegian neighbors and so arrange that the advantages which Sweden had preserved through her neutrality would be made equally available to Norway until the Norwegians got ready to proceed. I thought that this was the more possible because I knew Norway, Sweden, and Denmark had been negotiating a possible combination of interests.
The Ambassador said that he thought this was an excellent solution.
He likewise asked whether, in order to get a good standing at Chicago, Norway ought to fire ahead and order new planes. I said that I thought this did not make any great difference since new types of planes would not be ready for some time to come, and probably during the interim period the principal supply of transport planes would be United States surplus army transport types. However, it could do no harm if his Government wanted to have an early position in new types which would not be in production for many months after the war.
- Wilhelm Munthe de Morgenstierne.↩