Cablegram 120 [1] CANBERRA, 27 June 1944
SECRET
Your telegram No. 102 [2] and Moscow’s reply to you No. 35. [3] 1.
You should inform Polish Government that Australian Government is gratified to learn of the resumption of relief shipments to the U.S.S.R., and of Polish Government’s agreement that supplies should be addressed to Commissariat for Trade. You should make clear the exact extent to which Soviet acceptance of these relief supplies has been indicated to date, and of the reason why the Legation has not been in a position to report on the subject. You should also point out that Polish Government is under a misapprehension regarding the ‘Polish Advisers’ who are to assist in distribution. These would be representatives of local Polish communities approved by the Soviet authorities and not nominees of Polish Government. Government’s consistent views on this and other matters referred to are in accord with concluding two paragraphs of Moscow telegram 35 [4], and you should point out especially that insistence on attachment of Polish officials to the Legation at this stage would be inopportune, and likely to prejudice the present favourable development.
2. You might take the opportunity of intimating informally to M.
Czapski [5] the opinion of the Government and of the Legation that practical alleviation of the conditions of Poles in the U.S.S.R.
can only be achieved by working under the conditions set by the Soviet authorities, and express the hope that the Polish Government will be willing, for the sake of its practical advantages, to co-operate to this end to the fullest possible extent. In this respect, you might mention Maloney’s personal belief that the distribution of these supplies to Poles will be in fact achieved.
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1 This cablegram was annotated ‘120- Repeated to Moscow’.
2 Dispatched 20 June. Oil file AA:A989, 44/715/5/2/6, ii.
3 Dispatched 22 June. On the file cited in note 2.
4 Maloney pointed out that while the Soviet Govt was likely to allow the resumption of shipment of relief supplies to Poles in the Soviet Union it would only allow them to be distributed by the Commissariat for Trade. He recommended acceptance of the Soviet Govt’s proposed method of distribution.
5 Assistant Under-Secretary of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (in London).
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[AA:A989, 44/715/5/2/6, ii]