793.94111/95½
Memorandum by the Under Secretary of State (Welles)11
The French Chargé d’Affaires, Mr. Jules Henry, called to see me this afternoon. Mr. Henry said that he had just received a telegram from his Government which was in the nature of a personal reply from Mr. Chautemps, the French Prime Minister, to the confidential inquiry he had received recently through Mr. Henry from the President with regard to the matter of Indo-China.12
Mr. Henry said that Mr. Chautemps wished the President to know that in his judgment the possibility of Japanese aggression against Indo-China was not a remote contingency; that on the contrary, the Japanese Government through the Japanese Ambassador in Paris had intimated to the French Government that should munitions and implements of war continue to be shipped over the Yunnan Railroad, the Japanese would bomb the railroad in order to destroy that means of transportation of munitions to China. Furthermore, the French Government was informed that the Japanese had recently sent units of the Japanese Navy to South China waters and were preparing a base for the bombing operations above referred to on one of the islands in that region. The French Government consequently felt that as a measure of national defense it was obligated to prevent the further shipment of munitions over the railroad. The French Government, however, had temporized by issuing orders which permitted munitions purchased prior to October 30 to be shipped over the railroad.
Mr. Chautemps further desired the President to know that the French Government was prepared to reconsider this attitude and to permit further shipments of munitions to China over the railroad should the Brussels Conference result in any definite agreement among [Page 673] the signatories of the Nine-Power Treaty in the nature of a joint accord to permit continued aid to China. He made it clear that France would not run the risks which he envisaged by operating solely as an isolated power in this regard.
Mr. Henry once more referred to the hope of his Government that France be included in any subcommittee which might be created by the Brussels Conference and to the urgent desire of the French Government for a closer identification with Great Britain and with the United States in all that related to the Far Eastern situation.
- Copy transmitted by the Under Secretary of State on November 11 to President Roosevelt. Mr. Welles noted similar telegraphic advices from Ambassador Bullitt in Paris and added: “I assume that you will not feel it necessary to make any reply to this message, at least for the time being.”↩
- See telegram No. 1588, November 10, 4 p.m., from the Ambassador in France, vol. iv, p. 172.↩