Office of the Historian

740.00112 European War 1939/332: Telegram

The Minister in the Netherlands (Gordon) to the Secretary of State

The Hague, October 18, 1939—4 p.m.
[Received October 18—2:53 p.m.]

227. My 218, October 12, 4 p.m.52 Forthcoming negotiations in London will now probably only begin next Monday. At present instructions to the delegation are only in the skeleton stage; nevertheless, four cardinal points already emerge which will be pressed vigorously.

1.
The Dutch delegation will be empowered to guarantee that various imported contraband commodities will only be used for home consumption. The Foreign Office now seems to feel a little more hopeful than previously that the British list of contraband goods can be somewhat whittled down and ameliorated—for instance, there seems to be a possibility that the British may agree to eliminate tea and coffee from the [list?] and to refrain from adding tobacco at a later date.
2.
The delegation will seek British agreement to a reexportation by Holland to other neutrals of commodities figuring integrally on the British contraband [list?] or consisting partly of articles or materials on the said [list?].
3.
An attempt will be made to secure British agreement that certain articles with a negligible amount of contraband materials therein may be exported to Germany even without compensation, e. g., finished articles comprising the contents of a few spindles worth of textile materials or a modest amount of rubber, et cetera; by “without compensation” is meant that the Dutch will not have to guarantee that they will receive from Germany a similar amount of textile materials or rubber in other forms.
4.
The Dutch will seek British agreement to the following form of trade: Holland for instance finds herself unable at the moment to buy arms, ammunition and other material for the use of her armed forces elsewhere than in Germany; these articles of course compromise [comprise?] a certain amount of copper, tin, possibly rubber and other contraband materials:—in exporting such strategically valuable material Germany will demand compensation therefor in the form of a similar amount of copper, tin, rubber, etc., either in their natural state or as part of semi-finished articles. Naturally the British will want ironclad assurances that Germany’s stock of such contraband materials be not increased by such trade; consequently they may insist that Germany must be the first to export such finished goods and that only in return therefor can Holland and [sic] export to her semi-finished articles with a (presumably vigorously controlled) similar amount of strategic contraband materials—the Foreign Office professes to regard this latter as a procedural detail but it would seem to me to be a point of the greatest importance. In connection with point 4, it should be borne in mind that the Dutch can supply commodities on the British contraband list such as rubber and tin via Vladivostok and the trans-Siberian and others such as copper on Netherlands ships through northern ports such as Narvik.
Gordon
  1. Not printed; it stated: “A Dutch delegation will return to London next week to resume negotiations.” (740.00112 European War 1939/287)↩