Office of the Historian

871.00/11–3046

Memorandum by the Deputy Director of the Office of European Affairs (Hickerson) to Mr. Horace J. Nickels, of the Division of Southern European Affairs

[Washington,] November 30, 1946.

Mr. Nickels: I have just come from a meeting with Mr. Acheson and Mr. Clayton.67 Both of them felt on balance that we should not send the attached telegrams.68 Incidentally, Balfour69 of the British [Page 668] Embassy telephoned Acheson this morning and said that the Foreign Office’s views had been fully set forth to the State Department against this action but that if Dean wished to discuss it further with him, he would be available. Acheson’s principal objection to this was not that it would “advertise our impotence” in Roumania, but that it would start another chain of notes between us and the USSR. He said that the Russians would doubtless reply that the election was fine and that we had no right to intervene in the internal affairs of Roumania and that this note would be couched in such offensive terms that we would feel called upon to reply and then they would reply and so on.

I told Mr. Acheson that there were about as many arguments against taking this action as in favor of it; that I regarded the step as a natural consequence of our recent press announcement70 that we could not regard the election as compliance with Roumania’s commitments; that this initiative might be the final action in the Roumanian chapter or useful preliminary if someone can think of effective action which the U.S. or the U.K. could take in the future. Mr. Acheson asked if I felt that we should consult the Secretary, and I replied that I did not. He decided on balance not to send the telegrams. I have informed Donald Maclean of the British Embassy by telephone.

I think that it might be useful to keep this draft telegram in the files marking it carefully “Not Sent.”

John Hickerson
  1. William L. Clayton, Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs.↩
  2. The proposed telegrams to London and Moscow under reference are not printed. They outlined notes which would have been sent to the British Foreign Office and Soviet Foreign Ministry. For substance of notes, see telegram 745, November 26, to Bucharest, p. 657.↩
  3. John Balfour, British Minister.↩
  4. Presumably, reference is to Department’s press release of November 26, text of which is printed in Department of State Bulletin, December 8, 1946, p. 1057.↩