800.796/10–3144: Telegram
The Chargé in the United Kingdom (Gallman) to the Secretary of State
[Received 10:38 p.m.]
9399. ReEmbs 9386, October 31, noon, and 9385, October 30, 9 p.m.5 We talked with Sir Orme Sargent6 this afternoon about the decision of the Soviet Government not to participate in the Chicago Civil Aviation Conference and about the attempt of the Soviet Government to bring about representation of the Polish Committee of National Liberation at the EITO Conference.7
Sargent said that he did not regard either of these moves of the Soviet Government as an indication that the Soviets would not be prepared to collaborate in the work of the post war period. To him these two recent moves had different meanings. He regarded the decision not to participate in the Chicago conference as a step toward wiping out the last traces of the “ostracism” so prevalent in the 1920’s. Russia today felt strong enough, he said, not to tolerate the kind of treatment that she was given in the years immediately following the revolution and which some countries still accorded her and she was, in his opinion, determined to take advantage of every opportunity while she was in her present favorable position to put an end to the remaining traces of such treatment.
The Soviet move regarding representation of the Polish National Committee at the EITO Conference, Sargent said, appeared to him to be the more serious of the two recent developments. He interpreted this move, he said, as in the nature of a warning that unless the present Polish Government in London was quickly brought to an agreement with Moscow on Moscow’s terms, the Soviet Government would begin dealing in all respects with the Polish National Committee of Liberation as the Government of Poland.
[For minutes of the Conference, see Department of State Publication No. 2820, Proceedings of the International Civil Aviation Conference, Chicago, Illinois, November 1–December 7, 1944 (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1948, 1949), in two volumes.]