860C.00/5–246
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Acting Secretary of State
| Participants: | Dr. Litauer, Counselor of the Polish Embassy; |
| Mr. Dean Acheson, Acting Secretary of State; and | |
| Mr. C. Burke Elbrick, Assistant Chief, Division of Eastern European Affairs |
Dr. Litauer called today for the purpose of leaving a note summarizing a decree of the Polish Council of Ministers, dated April 1, 1946,38 which purports to implement the nationalization law of January 3, 1946. I thanked Dr. Litauer for this communication and said that the interested officers of the State Department would study it.
I then told Dr. Litauer that there were two matters that I should like to discuss with him which are a source of great concern to the United States Government.
He would recall that the Polish representatives in the negotiations had agreed to the publication in Poland, as well as in the United States, of the notes exchanged at the conclusion of the negotiations. Eight days have now passed since the notes were exchanged and, according [Page 444] to our information, these notes have not yet been published in Poland. It is the view of this Government that Poland has not lived up to its commitments and to the conditions established prior to the authorization of the credit to Poland. I asked him to inform his Government of this fact and to request that the notes be published in Poland without delay. Dr. Litauer tried to explain that the non-publication to date may be due to the fact that the texts which were transmitted by cable were delayed in transmission or were so badly garbled that they could not be read upon receipt. He said that the complete text had been forwarded by courier and that the courier had arrived in Warsaw yesterday. He promised to take the matter up with his Government and to inform the Department of the action taken.
Perhaps in anticipation of some such rebuke, Dr. Litauer had prepared an aide-mémoire39 which quotes a portion of the speech of the Polish Prime Minister before the National Council in Warsaw which makes reference to the elections in accordance with the provisions of the Yalta and Potsdam Agreements and which states that the elections will be held in the autumn of this year and the referendum, to take place on June 30, will be an initial step leading to these elections.
The second matter of concern to this Government is the fact that the text of a speech made before the National Council of Poland by the Vice President of the Polish Peasant Party40 had not been received in this country for publication although American correspondents in Warsaw had attempted to cable the text. It appears that the Polish censorship authorities have suppressed the text of this speech. This is a violation of the commitments which the Polish Government has made on several occasions regarding freedom to be granted to Allied press correspondents. This commitment was made at (1) Potsdam41 (2) in the assurances given by the Polish Embassy in response to a congressional inquiry made at the time of UNRRA appropriations42 and (3) a note presented by the Polish Ambassador on April 24, 1946 at the conclusion of the credit negotiations.43 This failure to observe this commitment is very disturbing to the United States Government and Dr. Litauer was requested to bring this matter to the attention of the Polish Government and to request that permission be given immediately to American correspondents to transmit Banczyk’s speech [Page 445] to the United States. Dr. Litauer said he thought a large part of Banczyk’s speech had already been published in today’s Herald Tribune in a despatch by Homer Bigart. While it is true that Bigart’s article contains a very severe criticism of the methods of the Communist-controlled Provisional Government, it does not quote Banczyk’s speech. Occasion was found before Dr. Litauer departed to inform him of this fact and to impress upon him the importance of communicating this Government’s views on the subject to Warsaw.
- See note from the Polish Ambassador dated April 30, p. 440.↩
- Dated April 30, p. 440.↩
- Stanislaw Bańczyk. His speech was made on April 26.↩
- See section IX of the Report on the Tripartite Conference of Berlin, August 2, 1945, Foreign Relations, The Conference of Berlin (The Potsdam Conference) 1945, vol. ii, p. 1508.↩
- See note from the Polish Ambassador to the Secretary of State, March 28, p. 415.↩
- Department of State Bulletin, May 5, 1946, p. 762.↩