793.94/5898
Memorandum by the Secretary of State of a Conversation With the Danish Minister (Wadsted)
The Minister of Denmark expressed his congratulations at Mr. Roosevelt’s escape and his horror at the crime which was committed.98 I thanked him for it. He said he spoke without any message from his Government and on his own initiative. He then asked what news I had in regard to the Far Eastern situation. I told him I had none except what he presumably had seen himself in the newspapers. He made some remark about the nonrecognition policy being the center of the controversy. I took occasion to explain carefully what our position was in regard to that, emphasizing it was a policy designed to express moral disapproval by public opinion and not to involve an act of force, and he, himself, said that it seemed to have been found very welcome among the other nations who were a little afraid of the military and force provisions of the Covenant of the League. He spoke also of mandated islands. I told him that I had made no representation about those; that they were a matter which would not come up unless Japan resigned from the League and then it would seem to be a disputed question between the League and Japan as to whether the mandate continued, and that I had not entered into this question.
- Reference is to the attempted assassination of President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt and the killing of Mayor Cermak (of Chicago) at Miami, Fla., on February 15, 1933.↩