Editorial Note
In a statement read to representatives of the press at the Department of State on March 16, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs George V. Allen announced that the Department had granted [Page 809] visas for 22 official representatives of Eastern European governments to attend the New York Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace. Assistant Secretary Allen explained that this had been done because of the United States Government’s “unswerving devotion to freedom of information and free speech on any issue, however controversial it may be.” Allen added that the United States Government had taken into consideration the manner in which the Communists would attempt to use and manipulate the conference together with other facts, such as (1) that none of the cultural leaders of Eastern Europe would be free to express any view other than that dictated by the political authorities in Moscow, (2) that the Soviet Union had ignored representations of the American Embassy in Moscow on repeated occasions concerning cultural exchange between the two countries, and (3) that the Soviet Government had frequently failed even to answer visa applications by high American officials. For the text of the Assistant Secretary’s statement, see Department of State Bulletin, March 27, 1949, page 392.
In the days that followed there were press reports from abroad that would-be delegates from Great Britain, France, Brazil, and Italy had not received necessary visas which would admit them to the United States for the New York conference. Michael J. McDermott, Special Assistant to the Secretary of State for Press Relations, made it clear to representatives on March 22 that the Department of State had issued visas only to those delegates to the Few York conference who had been designated by their governments and sent officially. MeDermott explained further that inasmuch as the Communist side of the case would be adequately represented, it was not necessary to grant visas to unofficial delegates from outside Eastern Europe. The substance of McDermott’s statement to the press was included as the lead item of the Department of State Wireless Bulletin for March 22 (No. 68). (The Wireless Bulletin, the official news service of the Department of State, was prepared by the Division of International Press and Publications and transmitted daily by radio to various foreign service posts abroad. Bound volumes of the Wireless Bulletin are retained in the Library of the Department of State.)