Office of the Historian

840.811/12–648

Memorandum by the Director of the Office of European Affairs (Hickerson) to Mr. John W. Tuthill, Adviser in the Office of Transport and Communications

[Washington,] November 24, 1948.

In response to the inquiries contained in your memorandum of [Page 731] November 17, 1948, concerning our views on (1) the desirability of sending a note to the Soviets at this time and (2) if such a note is to be sent whether the draft attached with your memorandum is appropriate, it is our feeling that, particularly in the light of the reluctance of the British to take parallel action and the fact that a major purpose of such a communication would be to preserve British rights under the 1921 Statute to which we are not an adherent, it is undesirable to send a note at this time.1 Should an appropriate occasion present itself, such as Soviet convocation of the new commission, we would be prepared to consider the advisability of utilizing that opportunity to reiterate our rejection of the new Soviet convention. If upon such consideration it should be decided to send a note, the present draft would have to be amended in the light of circumstances then prevailing.2

  1. On December 6, 1948, at the time that Assistant Secretary Norton sent a memorandum to Under Secretary of State Lovett (see infra), he also replied to Mr. Hickerson’s memorandum of November 24, writing in part: “While I am in agreement with your conclusion, I do not feel that a ‘major purpose’ of the note would have been to preserve British rights under the ’21 statute. The purposes I had in mind were set forth in my earlier memoranda and were essentially propaganda and political in nature rather than legal.” (840.811/12–648)↩
  2. For the text of the note by the United States on November 15, 1949, to the missions in Washington of the governments of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia, sent because of the first meeting of the new Danubian Commission at Galatz on November 11, see the Department of State Bulletin, November 28, 1949, p. 832. Parallel notes were to be delivered by the governments of France and the United Kingdom.↩