Editorial Note
During the week following delivery of the Soviet notes on Germany to representatives of the American, British, and French Embassies in Moscow, similar notes were delivered by the governments of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland to the Western Embassies in Prague, Budapest, and Warsaw. The Romanian Government issued a declaration protesting establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Government of Albania presented a note along similar lines to the French Minister at Tirana, with the request that he communicate it also to the Governments of the United States and the United Kingdom. The texts of these notes and of the Romanian declaration are in file 862.01/10–449 to 10–1849. At his press conference on October 12, Secretary Acheson rejected these attempts “… by governments which had been foisted upon their own peoples by totalitarian methods to criticize, in the interests of a foreign power rather than of their own people, the actions of those nations which are endeavoring to establish democratic institutions in the greater part of Germany for which they are responsible.” For the full text of Secretary Acheson’s statement, see Department of State Bulletin, October 24, 1949, page 634.