852.00/10201
The Ambassador in Spain (Hayes) to President Roosevelt
My Dear Mr. President: I have immensely enjoyed the visit which Mr. Myron Taylor57 has paid me, during the past two days, at the Embassy; and I am availing myself of his offer to transmit this letter direct to you.
For us and the United Nations, the situation in Spain has undergone steady improvement during the past month. Let me mention some six respects in which the improvement is evidenced:
(1) The replacement of Serrano Suñer by Jordana in the Foreign Office. This means, to everybody here, the replacement of a petty, [Page 297] intriguing, and very slippery politician, troubled with stomach-ulcers and delusions of grandeur, by a gentleman who belongs to the nobility and the army and is honest, dependable, hard working, and endowed with good health and a sense of humor. To us, it means more—the replacement of a militantly pro-Axis man by a man who is pro-Spanish first and then more sympathetic with the Allies than with the Axis.
In a recent conversation with me, the new Minister expressed gratitude for American neutrality during the Spanish Civil War and a desire to maintain real Spanish neutrality in the present international war—which is quite a different refrain from what Suñer was ever chanting about America’s having actively supported the “Reds” and therefore now obliging Spain to support the Axis. When Mrs. Hayes called on Countess Jordana, the latter took pains to explain that she was receiving my wife ahead of the wife of the German Ambassador. And the first dinner engagement which Jordana has accepted since he assumed office was last night to meet Mr. Taylor, at the American Embassy. These are all straws, but I believe they do indicate the way the wind is blowing.
(2) The “statement of policy” which the reorganized Government has recently caused to be published in every Spanish newspaper and broadcast over every Spanish radio. It pretends that “the policy of the past six years” is “unchanged”, yet it makes no mention of the Falange—which is like Hamlet with Hamlet left out. To be sure, it refers to Spain’s part in the “European New Order” (whatever that signifies) and to “the menace of Communism” (very real in Spain). But it curiously sounds and emphasizes two brand new notes: first, Spain’s solidarity with Portugal; and second, Spain’s ties with “Hispanic America”. And these new notes just after Portugal had practically congratulated Brazil on entering the war, and when all of Hispanic America (only Argentina and Chile excepted) had either broken relations with or declared war on the Axis!
(3) An obvious betterment of the Spanish press in the publication of Allied war-news. This began in a small way while Suñer was still in office, thanks, I believe, to my impressing upon him that unless he could help to disabuse the American public of their conviction that the Spanish press was operated solely in German and Japanese interest he would almost certainly have to do without American gasoline. Under Jordana the betterment has noticeably progressed. It is still far from the goal of impartiality, to say nothing of pro-Ally sympathy, but by increasing our own propaganda here as well as by judiciously prodding the Government, I am hopeful of quickening the progress.
[Page 298](4) The growing promise of successful operation of the purchase-supply program of the U.S.C.C.58 and B.E.W.59 The Axis is encountering stiff competition from us and the British on an ever widening economic front and while the Spanish Government is now withholding many export licenses from the Axis, it is according to us practically all we request. The British and ourselves are now meeting regularly with an inter-departmental committee of the Spanish Government, and negotiations, on the whole, are running smoothly. Jordana is quite sold to the program, and so too I think (though I am not yet certain) is the Minister of Industry and Commerce. The two main difficulties are: first, the shipping problem, enhanced by the Spaniards’ fear lest the Axis sink their merchant ships; second, the problem of blocked currencies in Spain and the United States. We are already tackling this second problem. The first only time and circumstance can solve.
(5) Notably increasing attacks of high-placed Catholic prelates here on Nazi and totalitarian ideology. This last week no less a personage than the Spanish Primate (The Archibishop of Toledo), who is an appointee and close friend of Franco and who has been regarded as mildly Falangist in sympathy, published in his Official Bulletin a drastic four-page condemnation, prepared by Cardinal Segura, of a Spanish translation of a Nazi book expounding the doctrines of racialism, sterilization, et cetera. It is creating quite a sensation.
(6) The immense current interest in the trip of Myron Taylor to the Vatican, Widely advertised and commented upon in the Spanish press. German-owned and Falangist papers interpret it as a peace-overture of the United Nations more moderate papers perceive in it an effort of the United States to detach Italy from the Axis and make a separate peace with her. Gossip—which in Spain is more informative than the controlled press—has it that the trip is “sensational” and “bodes no good to Germany”. I have been deluged by Spanish requests to meet “the great Myrón Taylór”, and my dinner last night, originally planned for eighteen guests, turned out to be for thirty—including Jordana with his chef de cabinet and military aide, the Under Secretary Pan de Soraluce, the Papal Nuncio, the Chilean Ambassador, the British and Irish Ministers—strange bed-fellows, but all anxious to be in bed with Taylor and catch what he might say in his sleep. The Taylor visit, aside from being a great personal boon to me, has come at the right psychological moment for the American cause in Spain. We need here an occasional visit of just this sort.
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