707.1160F/2: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Chargé in Germany (Kirk)
Washington, May 19,
1939—4 p.m.
179. Your 384, May 17, 4 p.m. As this Government has not recognized a Slovakian Government, your relations with the Slovakian [Page 189] Minister in Berlin should be purely personal and not official. The Department would not perceive any objection to your receiving the Minister if he called in a personal capacity.
Please consult Department’s confidential mail instruction no. 161 of December 22, 193899 concerning relations with “Manchukuo” officials.
Hull
- Not printed. The instruction enclosed a paraphrase of the Department’s telegram No. 12, January 31, 1933, 5 p.m., to the Embassy in Japan for guidance of the Consul General at Seoul in his relations with “Manchoukuo” consular officials. In his capacity as senior officer of the consular body at Seoul, no objection was perceived to his communicating with the “Manchoukuo” officials in question solely on ceremonial or procedural matters; in such communications he was not to use any phrase indicative of his own representative capacity as American Consul General. Although he was neither to enter into any official relationship with “Manchoukuo” consuls nor to cultivate social relations of the character usually attendant upon official intercourse, the Department did not disapprove an informal acquaintance with such consular officers, provided that these personal and private relations did not incur social obligations or make conspicuous the fact of this association. (707.1193 Manchuria/8)↩