Office of the Historian

719.52/7–845

No. 239
Memorandum by the Acting Secretary of State
[Extracts]
[Washington,] July 9, 1945.

Memorandum of Conversation

Participants: The Spanish Ambassador, Sr. Don Juan Francisco de Cárdenas;
Acting Secretary, Mr. Grew.

The Spanish Ambassador, Mr. de Cárdenas, called on me this afternoon and took up the following matters. …

2. The Ambassador then referred to the action taken with regard to Spain at the San Francisco Conference by which there had been placed on the record the understanding that membership in the world organization would not be open to states whose regimes were established with the help of military forces belonging to the states which have waged war against the United Nations as long as these [Page 302] regimes are in power.1 The Ambassador asked if I was aware of some proposed action by Chile and Uruguay by which they would openly assert the application to Spain of this provision and whether Mr. Armour had recently made some statement on this subject in Madrid. I said I had no information regarding any such action by either Chile and Uruguay or by Armour. In this connection the Ambassador said that he was not speaking under instructions and only as from friend to friend.

. . . . . . .

J[oseph] C. G[rew]

  1. The reference is to the following declaration by the Mexican Delegation at the Third Meeting of Commission I of the United Nations Conference on International Organization on June 19:

    “It is the understanding of the Delegation of Mexico that paragraph 2 of Chapter III [of the Charter of the United Nations] cannot be applied to the states whose regimes have been established with the help of military forces belonging to the countries which have waged war against the United Nations, as long as those regimes are in power.”

    In presenting this declaration, which was adopted by Commission I, which exercised jurisdiction over questions of membership, the Mexican Delegate referred specifically to the Franco regime in Spain. In the course of the discussion of this declaration, Assistant Secretary of State James Clement Dunn made the following statement for the United States:

    “The United States Delegation is in complete accord with the statement of interpretation made by the Delegation of Mexico and desires to associate itself with that declaration.”

    See The United Nations Conference on International Organization: Selected Documents, pp. 569–578.

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