123 Arthur Bliss Lane
The Former Ambassador in Poland (Lane) to the Secretary of State
My Dear Mr. Secretary: I wish to congratulate you most heartily on your accomplishment in Moscow even though it may seem paradoxically negative; in other words, that you preferred to leave the Moscow Conference without a treaty rather than accept a compromise on the principles for which the United States stands. I expressed this thought publicly yesterday in an address before the Economic Club of Detroit.
[Page 426]I would be less than frank with you if I did not say that I disagree with the views which you expressed in your broadcast last night1 on the matter of the boundary between Poland and Germany. It was, therefore, a source of deep regret to me that your scheduled departure from Washington for Moscow was put forward so that the interview which had been arranged between us could not take place, as I was most anxious to give to you in person my views on the Polish-German frontier prior to the Moscow conference.
I am very anxious to support your policy and that of the Administration in the talks which I am making and in the articles which I propose to write, a purpose which the President and the Department, in your absence, have approved. For this reason I have declined to answer questions which have been put to me in public as to the reasons for the implied indication that Germany, rather than Poland, is entitled to the former German territories now under Polish administration. I cannot, however, refuse indefinitely to discuss this question.
My views on the matter presented at the time I was Ambassador to Poland are a matter of official record in the Department of State. My main preoccupation is the effect of our apparent present policy on our long-range relation with the Polish people. The effect on the Polish, people of your predecessor’s Stuttgart speech was apparently not taken into account at the time. Certainly I received no instructions that the speech was to be made or the manner in which it was to be interpreted. Yet Mr. Byrnes’ speech was damaging to the cause of the opposition to the present puppet government, as well as to the prestige of the United States in Poland. For this reason I recommended that either I or Colonel Betts should consult with you prior to or at the Moscow Conference. As it was, you had no advisor familiar with current Polish affairs. I never received, as Ambassador to Poland, an official exposition of the Department’s point of view on the matter of the Polish-German frontier but, due to the courtesy of the British Ambassador, who showed me the telegrams from his colleague in Washington to the Foreign Office in London covering conversations between the British Embassy and the Department, I was kept currently, altough unofficially, informed of the Department’s attitude. Unfortunately, there have been very divergent opinions on these matters within the Department itself, during the past two years, which have resulted in a weakening of our stand. The Soviet and Polish government authorities are, of course, aware that the Department has not stood as an integrated [Page 427] whole with respect to Polish matters, especially those of an economic nature.
In order that I may discuss the Polish-German boundary question with you, so as to preclude if possible my embarrassing the Department in any public statements I may make, would you be willing to receive me in the near future at your convenience?
Believe me [etc.]
Faithfully yours,
- For the text of Secretary Marshall’s radio address of April 28 reporting to the nation on the results of the Moscow session of the Council of Foreign Ministers, see Department of State Bulletin, May 11, 1947, p. 919.↩