893.24/5–449
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Deputy Director of the Office of European Affairs (Achilles)
| Participants: | Col. Lee [Li], Chinese Army81 |
| Mr. Cummins | |
| Mr. Achilles, EUR |
Mr. Cummins brought in Col. Lee to discuss the question of 85 tanks which he said had been purchased for scrap from the British Government by a private company in England, and which he wished to import into the United States for rehabilitation, rearmament, and reexport to China. He said that the tanks were obsolete and of no use [Page 516] for military purposes in Europe, but that they would be of material value in China.
I said that I could speak only for Eur, but that from our point of view we saw a number of difficulties for the British in such a transaction. At a time when we were about to introduce legislation for the transfer of military equipment to the UK and other Atlantic Pact82 countries there would undoubtedly be serious criticism in Congress over the export from the UK to any place outside Europe of tanks. I asked whether the Western Union Military Committee had inspected the tanks, as they had done with the Belgian tanks, to determine whether they were of any value for the defense of Europe. He said that this had not been done, and I said our views would be considerably influenced by the result of such an inspection.
(What I should have told him, but did not think of, was that this is a problem for the British to worry about rather than this Government. If the British haven’t sense enough to stop things like this themselves, I don’t see how we can save them indefinitely.)