Office of the Historian

500C.115 28th Conference/50a: Telegram

The Secretary of State to the Minister in Finland (Schoenfeld)34

Washington, February 7, 1944—8 p.m.

18. Please call at the Foreign Office as soon as possible and say that the Finnish Government must realize that the ILO invitation (your 85, February 235) to Finland was issued pursuant to normal procedure and without regard to the present international situation. The Finnish Government will appreciate, however, that it would be highly embarrassing for it to accept an invitation to attend a conference on American soil which nations allied with the United States and at war with Finland are also expected to attend. Under the circumstances would not the Finnish Government feel that it should not accept the invitation to the conference?

For your information only the Soviet and British Governments are being informed of the foregoing.

Hull
  1. Repeated to the Ambassadors in London and Moscow as telegrams 938 and 238, respectively, with instructions to “inform the Government to which you are accredited of the action indicated in the following telegram sent to Helsinki.”↩
  2. Not printed; it concerned press reports on the question of Finland’s probable participation in the ILO Conference at Philadelphia (500C.115 28th Conference/48).↩