851.48/396
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Under Secretary of State (Welles)
The French Ambassador called to see me at his request. The Ambassador handed me an aide-mémoire55 dealing with the food question and in particular with the barter arrangement providing for the interchange of products between occupied and unoccupied France. This aide-mémoire ends with the statement that “representatives of American control will easily be able to obtain, particularly concerning wheat, full information regarding actual or future deliveries from the occupied zone as well as with regard to compensatory products sent out of unoccupied France.”
The Ambassador then went on to say that he had never been informed by his Government of the barter arrangement the nature of which had been communicated to the American Embassy in Vichy on February 14. He had known nothing of it until he saw it announced in the press. Upon requesting his Government for information he had been told to obtain a copy of the communication made to this Government from the State Department. The Ambassador said that he found himself in a very humiliating position in as much as he had been conducting with us conversations for relief in unoccupied France without having the slightest idea of the nature and extent of this barter arrangement.
I replied to the Ambassador that of course we would be glad immediately to make this information available to him, and that I suggested as a preliminary and desirable step that he send representatives of the Embassy this afternoon to confer with Mr. Atherton56 and such [Page 138] officials of the Department as he might designate in order to make every effort to clarify as rapidly as possible the whole situation, not only with regard to the barter arrangement, but also with regard to certain other facts which I desired now to bring to the Ambassador’s attention.
I said that it was unnecessary for me to remind the Ambassador of our desire to show every consideration to Marshal Pétain and of our recognition of the situation in which he found himself, and of our desire to pursue our traditional policy of friendship towards the French people in their present distress. I said this was, of course, contingent—and very positively contingent—upon our taking no step which could in any way prove in reality to be detrimental to the interests of Great Britain or prejudicial to the eventual British victory which this Government was committed to further in every practical way within the limits of our present policy. I said that all of our conversations with the Ambassador, including the agreements concerning the despatch of the two gift cargo ships had been based upon these premises, as the Ambassador well recognized.
I then read to the Ambassador certain portions of Admiral Leahy’s latest telegram57 on the subject of the barter arrangement and I said I fully shared Admiral Leahy’s expression of surprise that if in reality the French were going to obtain for unoccupied France 800,000 tons of wheat from occupied France at the same time they were so desperately anxious to procure cargoes of wheat from the United States, the explanation given to Admiral Leahy, as reported in his telegram and as reiterated in part in the aide-mémoire which the Ambassador had just handed me, did not to my mind answer the questions raised. I said it seemed to me that what was desired and what was really essential in the relations between the French Government and the United States at this stage was the utmost measure of frankness and the most complete clarity in all that related to assistance from the United States.
I said that we were now confronted with two specific questions in addition to the general questions I had mentioned above:
first, the definite charge that a large consignment of rubber was included in one of the four ships intercepted by the British on March 30;
second, that at the very moment when this Government, recognizing the serious situation created by the lack of petroleum in North Africa, had permitted the French steamer Frimaire to proceed to North Africa with a cargo of petroleum to be distributed under American supervision and control, the French Government was making arrangements to ship from Algeria 5,000 tons of gasoline to Italy and an Italian tanker had actually proceeded to Algerian ports for that purpose.
I said that I personally had the most complete faith in the honor of Marshal Pétain and in the validity of the assurances that he and [Page 139] General Weygand had given this Government, but that it seemed very clear from the information I had obtained that transactions of the kind I had just mentioned were being carried on without the knowledge of Marshal Petain nor of General Weygand, and that this Government could not possibly agree to render any further assistance to France unless and until transactions of this character, destined to be of such great assistance to the Axis powers, were completely and finally stopped. I said that not only were assurances in this sense required, but also practical evidence on the part of our agents in unoccupied France and in North Africa that the assurances were carried out in practice.
The Ambassador stated that he was shocked by the news of this gasoline transaction of which he had no knowledge whatever.
The Ambassador stated that he interpreted the aide-mémoire on food which he had just handed me as meaning that the French Government would be willing to authorize American representatives to supervise all supplies passing between occupied and unoccupied France and he added that he had again urgently requested his Government to accede to the suggestions made to him by the President in their most recent conversation, that American officials in French North African ports be permitted to inspect the cargoes of all French ships leaving French North African ports for the ports of Metropolitan France in order to be assured that only food supplies were contained therein and that no shipments which would involve assistance to the Axis powers were involved. The Ambassador stated that the President had said to him that if this could be done, he believed that the friction between the French and the British with regard to these shipments would be avoided.
I stated that these were very interesting suggestions which the President had formulated and I would be very glad to hear the final reaction of his Government thereto.