862t.01/10: Telegram
The Ambassador in France (Wallace) to the Acting Secretary of State
[Received March 22—6:37 p.m.]
790. Mission. The Rhineland High Commissioners decided on March 21 to send the following telegram to their respective Governments repeating it to Embassies at Paris.
“1500 soldiers of the Reichswehr with officers and a general took refuge in the British zone near Cologne on March 19. These troops have been disarmed and interned by British military authorities. Reichskommissar von Starck has officially requested the High Commission that these troops may be transported to unoccupied territory with their arms and equipment. He has specially asked that they may be transported to a position named by him in order that they may take part in pending operation by the French Government [German Government] in the neutral zone. [Omission indicated.] The High Commission has decided pending instructions from their Governments to keep interned for the present all troops taking refuge in the occupied territories. The High Commission is of opinion that an attitude of impartial neutrality observed by the Allied authorities since the beginning of the recent events has favored the complete maintenance of order in the occupied territory and has been received with satisfaction by the population of those territories. The High Commission is in any case of opinion that the troops should only be returned to the right bank without arms and that no movement of German troops in the occupied [territory] should in any case be allowed.”