The problem of obtaining publication of our communiqués is intensified by
the conflict now going on between the Foreign Office and the Spanish
censorship office, both of which have certain functions in connection
with the publication of news of foreign origin. It is known, for
example, that the censorship frequently mutilates articles approved by
the Foreign Office and declines to permit the publication of articles
which the Foreign Office has ordered to be published.
Since the Embassy started to discuss this subject with the Foreign
Office, considerable progress toward having all our war communiqués
published in full has been achieved, and the Embassy is hopeful that
further progress may be made.
[Enclosure]
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Counselor of
Embassy in Spain (Beaulac)
In connection with our discussion of petroleum matters I spoke to
Señor Pan de Soraluce concerning the political attitude of the
Spanish Government as evidenced by the Spanish controlled press. I
referred to the letter I had sent him on June 26th, and told him
that I had written him because the Ambassador and I attached the
greatest importance to the need of improvement in the attitude of
the Spanish press if our economic program were to succeed and our
general relations were to be maintained on a reasonably satisfactory
plane.
I told him of the constant struggle in which the State Department was
engaged to overcome the impression that existed in other
Governmental Departments and among the public that Spain was
committed to the Axis cause and would join the Axis if Hitler
insisted strongly enough.
Señor Pan endeavored to refute this theory, and I told him that it
was not my theory but a theory held by a great many people in the
United States, and the fact that it was held made it very difficult
for the State Department to bring about the kind of reciprocal
cooperation we would like to achieve. I said it was evident that the
impression that Spain was pro-Axis derived largely from the pro-Axis
tone of the Government-controlled Spanish press.
I said that following my conversations with him and with Señor
Doussinague, the Spanish press was publishing more of our
communiqués and at greater length, but many newspapers were still
not publishing them, or publishing them in abbreviated form. I told
him also that, while we had been successful at one time in obtaining
publication in the press of a large number of photographs of
interest to us in our war effort, the number had recently decreased,
although we knew from personal contact that the newspapers were
anxious to publish these photographs. It was obvious that Spanish
censorship was preventing their publication. I told him also that we
continued to have difficulty in distributing our information
bulletins, while the Germans, on the contrary, were given special
facilities for the distribution of theirs. I told him that this
whole situation would have to be radically altered if Spain expected
continued cooperation from the United States.
Señor Pan said he would discuss the whole matter with the Under
Secretary of the Presidency, who is a close adviser of General
Franco, and he was very hopeful that something might be done; He
appreciated the problem and believed it was in Spain’s interests to
overcome
[Page 295]
it. He had been
pleased to notice that more of our communiqués were being published
and he hoped that we could obtain complete satisfaction on that
score.
In this connection, I had told Señor Pan in a previous conversation
that whereas the Minister of Foreign Affairs had promised the
Ambassador to see that our communiqués were published without
omission and without deletion, the improvement we had been able to
obtain had come only after we had gone from person to person in an
effort ourselves to implement the Minister’s promise. I told him
that we did not intend to do this in the future, that with the
Spanish press so completely under the Government’s control we
believed that the Government itself should take steps to see that
the Foreign Minister’s promise was carried out.
Señor Pan referred to this conversation and said that the Minister of
Foreign Affairs was endeavoring to obtain complete control of
censorship and publication of foreign news, and that he thought he
had achieved his objective, but had learned later that Arrese53 had gotten to Franco and
succeeded in sabotaging the plan. Suñer was returning to the charge,
and Pan thought he had a chance of winning out, in which case, he
said, we might expect an improvement in the situation as it affected
us. (This, by the way, is also the opinion of the American press
representatives in Madrid.)
