701.60D11/243½
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Assistant Secretary of State (Berle)
The Finnish Minister came in to see me at his request.
He brought up again the question of restrictions on Finnish consuls who are by law required not to leave the city in which they work. He said he believed that some of the honorary consuls who were American citizens were not observing this; specifically, there was an honorary consul who worked in New York but lived in Long Island. He likewise asked about restrictions on his own movements, saying that he had to go to New York quite frequently in connection with the liquidation of the Finnish purchasing mission.
I said the matter was still under consideration and I would try to expedite a solution.65
He then, as usual, tried to draw me into a discussion of the general Finnish position. I avoided this, saying that I thought that the discussions had between himself and Mr. Welles had made the matter perfectly clear.
He renewed his insistence that they considered it a “Finnish War”, not to be connected with a World War. I confined myself to saying [Page 49] that unhappily Finland had got herself into the position of fighting on the side of the Germans, with all that implied.
He asked whether he might personally go over the various possibilities in the situation. I inquired whether he was doing this by instruction of his Government and he said he was not. I said that I likewise had no authority to discuss those matters and that I feared that under all the circumstances, merely personal discussion could be of no useful result.
- A notation dated March 12, 1942, to this portion of the memorandum reads: “Mr. Berle says to let Eu [Division of European Affairs] handle this: the Minister should not be able to shop around.”↩