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"Nuts to You." Next day in answer to this protest, not Cordell Hull, busy in Lima, but Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles received handsome Dr. Thomsen. Two days before, Dr. Thomsen had informed Mr. Welles that Germany, whose currency export restrictions have long barred the transfer of German estate funds to U. S. beneficiaries, had finally agreed that U. S. heirs would henceforth get their money in full, regardless of their race or creed. Dr. Thomsen is himself an amiable and reasonable man, and deliberate Mr. Welles is a career diplomat of frigid temper, conservative habits, impeccable speech. But Mr. Welles is also the man who wrote for Secretary Hull an extremely sharp note on Mexican expropriations this year, and when harsh words are required Mr. Welles is an expert in speaking them.
Half an hour after Dr. Thomsen entered the Welles office he emerged, imperturbable. Then Mr. Welles issued to the press (including Kurt Sell of the German News Agency) his digest of the interview. In diplomatic language the substance of his answer to the Man of 1938 (see p. 11) was "Nuts to you!"
". . . Mr. Welles said the German Government must surely be familiar with the fact that the recent policies pursued in Germany had shocked and confounded public opinion in the United States more profoundly than anything that had taken place in many decades, and such references to this state of public indignation as may have been made certainly represented the feeling of the overwhelming majority of the people of the United States.
"Mr. Welles said it seemed to him the desire of the German Government to make a protest of this character came with singular ill grace. For the past few months he had followed carefully the German press, which he was sure the Charge d'Affaires could hardly dispute was completely under the influence and dictation of the authorities of the German Government, and he had rarely read more unjustifiable criticism or open attacks on members of another Government. . . .
"The Acting Secretary of State concluded the interview by saying that . . . so long as the attacks against officials of the United States Government, which had been continuing for so long, persisted in Germany, the German Government could hardly suppose that attacks of the same character would not continue in the United States."
Do Not Like. Not since 1917 has the U. S. given any nation such a comeuppance. It was stronger than the recent notes to Germany on the repudiated Austrian debt and the refugee problem, stronger than the "temporary recall" of Ambassador Hugh Wilson. It was so strong that the Nazi Government did not even let its press tell the German people about it. It was as close to a severance of diplomatic relations as two "friendly" nations can get.
Actual severance would make Germany the diplomatic (and trading) pariah which Russia was between 1917 and 1933. To drive home the fact that the U. S. was not joking, Franklin Roosevelt unexpectedly-motored out to dine with Secretary Ickes and his attractive young wife at "Headwaters Farm" in Olney, Md.