Office of the Historian

740.00119 Potsdam/7–2945

No. 826
The First Secretary of Embassy in Portugal (Cannon) to the Director of European Affairs (Matthews)1
Berlin Conference, July 29, 1945.

Memorandum

Here are some new items, if the Soviet Government reopens the matter of how well everything is going in the Balkans:

1. When our representative on the ACC in Hungary asked the ACC to approve the entry of 6 newspaper correspondents, he received a reply (June 11) saying:

“We cannot agree to workers of this category coming as the present situation in the Allied Control Commission does not contemplate the presence of press correspondents on the territory of Hungary.”

(Note: The foregoing quotation is from the British files, but we have no reason to question its accuracy. I had not seen the text of the letter when I left Washington in June. In any event, the correspondents have not been admitted.)

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2. On July 18 General Schuyler, our representative in Rumania asked the Soviet Chairman of the ACC for a minor courtesy (facilities for obtaining coal for a boat to visit the lower Danube). General Susaikov replied that his authority extends no further than Galatz (the first of the places to be visited), though General Schuyler knows that the ACC has representatives at the other places. (War Department tel. M–1296 July 252).

3. Our representative at Bucharest telegraphs that the Soviet officials on the ACC in Rumania contend that the revised ACC procedure does not permit our mission to decide “unilaterally” the number of its own personnel.3

This is important, since the Soviet Delegation here insists that the Conference need not take up the matter, because under the revised statutes everything is now wonderful. Note that the language of the Soviet revision of the statutes4 is unequivocal on this point:

“The British and American representatives in the ACC will have the right to determine the numbers and composition of their own missions.”

In connection with the foregoing, and with the argument on freedom of the press, it is interesting to have another look at the Soviet paper (see attached) in rejoinder to our paper on Liberated Europe.5

C. W. Cannon
  1. Printed from a carbon copy on which there is an uncertified typed signature.↩
  2. Document No. 815.↩
  3. See document No. 820.↩
  4. See the enclosure to document No. 797.↩
  5. Not attached. See document No. 804.↩