File No. 656.119/286
The Ambassador in Great Britain ( Page) to the Secretary of State
[Received April 1, 4.29 p.m.]
9299. War Trade Board [from Sheldon]:
No. 362. Your confidential No. 256.1 The only step in the Dutch negotiations in which the British had my approval beforehand was the talk that Lord Robert Cecil had with Van Vollenhoven, as mentioned in my No. 225,2 which was rather a very strong hint at possible requisition than an ultimatum. The telegram sent by the Foreign Office to their Minister at The Hague, as per my No. 246,3 I was entirely ignorant of, and on learning of its contents I arranged for a conference with the members of the Shipping Mission and the Foreign Office which resulted in the despatch of the joint cable with Stevens’ No. 255.4 As intimated in your telegram No. 194,5 I had fully expected that a joint note would be made to the Netherlands Government and I mentioned this to Lord Robert Cecil in my letter of March 15, contained in my telegram to you No. 290.6 I would furthermore invite your attention to my telegram No. 2755 asking whether you approved of my No. 255, what action you had taken, and asking for instructions in good season in anticipation of the Dutch reply about to be received. From the foregoing you will see that we had expected here that definite instructions would be received for the composition of a joint note or else on the lines of your telegram No. 194 that you would arrange with the British Embassy there the text of a joint note which would be transmitted to The Hague. Replying to the last sentence of your 256, the telegram that was sent by [Page 1448] the Foreign Office to the British Minister at The Hague was never submitted to the Embassy or me for approval nor was any intimation given us that it was to be sent. We received copy of it after it had been sent. In my opinion the original British ultimatum that was sent to Holland, as communicated to you in my No. 246, should certainly have been submitted to us to obtain your approval, but I doubt if the Foreign Office had any other object in despatching it without submitting it beforehand than that of gaining time. I believe they felt from the telegrams which you had sent about requisitioning that you would approve of the ultimatum and the text of the message as sent had the disadvantage from the British point of view of their appearing to take whatever onus would attach to initiation of such action. I realized as soon as I had seen the text of their ultimatum the gravity of the situation and brought about a joint conference with the Shipping Mission and the Foreign Office which resulted in my telegram No. 255. As mentioned above, the Foreign Office may have been in some measure led to take the independent action they did owing to the fact that the previous Dutch negotiations had been located here in London in spite of the fact that the major portion of the shipping to be requisitioned lay in American ports. We shall use our best endeavors always to prevent any such independent action with a view of there being complete agreement and approval by all interested parties in all negotiation in the future.