740.0011 European War 1939/15949
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Under Secretary of State (Welles)
The Minister of Finland called to see me at his request. The Minister had with him rather copious notes. He said he desired to give [Page 80] me his own account of what had transpired relative to his own country during the time that I was away from Washington on my vacation.
I told the Minister that I had already been fully informed of his conversations with Secretary Hull through the latter’s memorandums and through the conversations I had with the Secretary of State in this regard.
The Minister nevertheless spent a very considerable amount of time in relating to me the contents of the instructions he had received from his Government and of the reports he had sent to his Government.
I said I felt that the position of this Government had been set forth very clearly and very succinctly in the statement of policy made to the Minister by the Secretary of State in the last conference they had held and it seemed to me that there was nothing that I could add to that. I said that the sympathy of the American people had been overwhelmingly demonstrated at the time Finland was waging her war of self-defense against Russian aggression, but that the Minister and the Finnish Government must be prepared for a very material change in public opinion in the United States regarding Finland if Finland pursued her present policy which could only be construed by the American people as a policy of aid and comfort to the present German Government.