ministers of the Baltic countries as the envoys of sovereign governments. Meanwhile, the Department of State instructed US representatives to withdraw from the Baltic states for "consultations." In 1940, The New York Times described the declaration as "one of the most exceptional diplomatic documents issued by the Department of State in many years." The declaration was a source of contention during the subsequent alliance between the Americans, the British, and the Soviets, but Welles persistently defended it. In a discussion with the media, he asserted that the Soviets had maneuvered to give "an odor of legality to acts of aggression for purposes of the record." In a memorandum describing his conversations with British Ambassador Lord Halifax in 1942, Welles stated that he would have preferred to characterize the plebiscites supporting the annexations as "faked." In April 1942 he wrote that the annexation was "not only indefensible from every moral standpoint, but likewise extraordinarily stupid." He interpreted any concession in the Baltic issue as a precedent that would lead to further border struggles in eastern Poland and elsewhere. As the war intensified, Roosevelt accepted the need for Soviet assistance and was reluctant to address postwar territorial conflicts. During the 1943 Tehran Conference, he "jokingly" assured Stalin that when Soviet forces reoccupied Baltic countries, "he did not intend to go to war with the Soviet Union on this point." However,, he explained, "the question of referendum and the right of self-determination" would constitute a matter of great importance for the Americans. Despite his work with Soviet representatives in the early 1940s to forward the alliance, Welles saw Roosevelt's and Churchill's lack of commitment as dangerous. Postwar The declaration linked American foreign policy towards the Baltic states with the Stimson Doctrine, which did not recognize the 1930s Japanese, German and Italian occupations. It broke with Wilsonian policies, which had supported a strong Russian presence as a counterweight to German power. During the Cold War, the Baltic issue was used as a point of leverage in American–Soviet relations. Sir Hersch Lauterpacht, a judge of international law, described the basis of the nonrecognition doctrine as being founded on the principles of ex injuria jus non oritur: Like the Stimson Doctrine, Welles's declaration was largely symbolic in nature, but it offered some material benefits in conjunction with Executive Order 8484, which enabled the diplomatic representatives of the Baltic states in various other countries to fund their