611.51/7–654: Telegram
No. 645
The Ambassador in France (Dillon) to the
Department of State
priority
65. I talked with Mendes for an hour and fifteen minutes this afternoon at his invitation. The first subject he brought up was Kerr Article.1 The talk also covered various aspects of the Indo China situation and EDC. These portions of the conversation are being reported in separate telegrams.2 Regarding Kerr article, Mendes said that he had been greatly upset by it. He recalled that when he had seen Bedell Smith he had told him of his desire to have full, frank relations with the US. He said that he realized that we might disagree from time to time as friends do, but what he particularly wished to avoid was any implication that we were not consulting fully and frankly together as allies. Kerr story, he said, carried this very implication which he had above all wanted to avoid. He then emphasized fact that he had kept me regularly and fully informed here in Paris and that Chauvel was seeing our delegation every day at Geneva and keeping them fully informed. He admitted again that communications had broken down in Indo China and that Ely had not informed O’Daniel of exact time and scope of French withdrawal in the Delta. He explained again that this was because the decisions had been made in mid-May and it had mistakenly been assumed that Ely had informed O’Daniel at that time.
He apologized for this error and then re-affirmed that Ely now had instructions to keep O’Daniel fully and regularly informed. Mendes then said that he had been particularly disturbed by implication in Kerr article that he had not given us full story on Chou En Lai talk at Bern. He categorically re-affirmed that Chauvel had told me every thing that had occurred and added that Johnson had also been informed and that Ambassador Bonnet had received instructions to inform the Department. Therefore he could not understand this portion of the Kerr article unless Kerr was attempting [Page 1429] to impute bad faith to him. Mendes spoke quietly but with great feeling and ended by asking me what could be done to improve the situation. I told him that the withdrawal in the Delta had made a great impression in the US and that it had been most unfortunate that we had not been previously informed. I said that we considered it most important that we be kept fully informed of events on the spot in Indo China. I also told him that while we recognized that we had been kept fully informed of events as they occurred, the Department did not feel that we were being fully consulted in advance of French decisions. I said that the Department realized that we had no right to ask [for] advance consultation but that naturally we would welcome it if it took place. Mendes replied that he did not think that the French had been remiss in this respect as he had spoken to us in advance about the meeting with Chou and that except for that there had been no real decisions to talk about as very little had happened at Geneva.
He ended this phase of the conversation by expressing the hope that the Kerr article did not really represent the views of the State Department and that there would be no repetition of this article which he said has caused great comment in the French press.
Comment: In this he is correct as the Embassy has received calls on the subject from practically all French newspapers.
- Reference is to an article by Walter Kerr which appeared in the July 6 issue of the Herald-Tribune. It stated that the French were withholding important information from the United States and that Mendès-France was dealing less openly and frankly with the United States than his predecessors. The Embassy’s comments on this article were transmitted to the Department of State in telegram 45 from Paris, July 6. (611.51/7–654)↩
- For a report of the conversation concerning the EDC, see telegram 68 from Paris, July 6, infra. The discussion concerning Indochina was summarized in telegrams 66 and 67 from Paris, July 6, which are printed in vol. xiii, Part 2, pp. 1786 and 1787.↩