File No. 659.119/872

The Secretary of the British Embassy ( Percy) to the Counselor for the Department of State ( Polk)

Dear Mr. Polk: Sir Richard has asked me to send you at once the substance of recent Foreign Office telegrams about Denmark. The following is the substance of two telegrams:

1.
It seems agreed that in the case of Denmark it may be necessary to concede the principle of certain exports of fish and cattle to Germany. We hope however to secure a fuller interruption of trade with Germany in the cases of Norway and Holland and if these countries knew that we were prepared to make concessions to Denmark that knowledge could not fail to stiffen their attitude towards us. It would be prudent to avoid this possible complication by allowing the Danish negotiations to stand over until we have settled with the other countries.
2.
The draft agreement with Denmark enclosed in your despatch of October 19th fixes figures for rations on which we should like to make detailed comments and, in some cases, counter-proposals. We are preparing and sending out material. We have arrived at a complete understanding with the French Government as to figures for rations for all northern neutrals which will be telegraphed to you shortly, but we should like to discuss the figures for Denmark with American and French and possibly also Russian delegates here before they are finally fixed. For this reason also we should welcome the postponement of a definite proposal to the Danish Government.

I should add that, while the first telegram above is not a new element in the discussion, as it represents a view which has more than once been informally discussed with the War Trade Board, the second does somewhat go back on the statement made previously to the board under instructions from London that we were prepared to accept the rations provisionally fixed by Doctor Taylor as an inducement to Denmark to accept our last proposals. The change is due to the fact that the full text which the Foreign Office now has is more complete than the summary which we had telegraphed. In view of this change, I am sending a copy of this letter to Mr. White.1

I understand that our position here now is that we are ready to settle finally with you the proposals to be made to Denmark in return for supplies sufficient for her needs, but we hope that Doctor Taylor will go fully with our experts into our statistics in London to determine more exactly what her needs really are and we should like to reserve the question of the appropriate moment for actually presenting our proposals to the Danish Government.

Yours sincerely,

Eustace Percy
  1. Beaver White, Food Administration representative on the War Trade Board.