852.00/5025: Telegram
The Chargé in France (Wilson) to the Secretary of State
[Received 1:50 p.m.]
416. In the course of a conversation with Léger last night he discussed the Spanish situation in some detail. He said that he was just in receipt of information indicating that Italian ships were even then en route to Spain carrying troops. He said that it would be a week before the control scheme could be officially placed in effect: during this week it would be possible for Mussolini to send additional troops to Spain without there being any official observation and report relative to a possible violation of existing agreements; there were however French and British war vessels off the coast of Spain on the stations which they will occupy once the control scheme is officially in force and it should be possible to obtain some knowledge whether Mussolini continues to send troops.
[Page 266]Léger remarked that the Italian calculations had been proving wrong regarding Spain: Italy had accepted the date of February 20 for putting into force the ban on volunteers feeling confident that within a few days thereafter Franco would capture Madrid; when this plan failed they continued to send troops to Spain but Franco has again failed despite these additional reenforcements. The question now is whether and to what extent Mussolini will send additional forces to Spain before the control scheme officially goes into force.
As regards the recall of volunteers Léger said that the Italian refusal to discuss the matter did not, of course, involve any question of violation of an agreement since no agreement existed on the subject. It was however Italy who had originally proposed the withdrawal of volunteers and her refusal now to discuss the matter obviously raised the question of good faith. Léger felt that Grandi’s statement to the effect that not a single Italian volunteer would leave Spain until Franco won the war should not be taken tragically: it was probably a personal reaction caused by loss of temper; it did of course reveal a state of mind that was not encouraging to those who believed that the best solution of the present international problem regarding Spain would be to get the so-called volunteers out of Spain. However, the Italian Government was free to discuss or not to discuss the question.
There was a third question regarding Spain, said Léger, which had now been raised by the Soviets, namely the demand for an investigation whether the presence in Spain of Italian regular army units and material did not constitute a violation of the Italian agreement of last August. Léger said that he felt that the best place to discuss this question was in the London Committee. There was an effort, however, being made to get the question before the Council at Geneva. If this were done he felt that it might risk causing the withdrawal of the Italians, probably followed by the Germans, from the London Committee with a consequent breaking down of the Non-intervention Agreement and abandonment of the policy followed for the past several months in an effort to keep the Spanish struggle from developing into a general conflict.
Léger remarked that in the frequent discussions he had had with Cerruti regarding Italy’s violation of her obligations under the Non-Intervention Agreement he had stated frankly that such action was hardly worthy of a country such as Italy: Cerruti’s reply was that no one should be astonished since Italy had always let it be known that under no conditions would she permit any other result of the Spanish conflict than a victory by Franco.
Speaking of the new political accord between Italy and Yugoslavia,55 Léger said that he felt that this was above all a question of prestige [Page 267] for Italy which would allow Mussolini to appear before the world and before his own people as having achieved a diplomatic victory. Italy had “paid dearly,” said Léger, to obtain this treaty. The accord could have no value insofar as giving Italy a freer hand for the Spanish adventure might be concerned (see my 406, March 24, 7 p.m.), since the accord provides for action by one party in favor of the other only in case one of them should be the victim of aggression or if their common interests should be menaced; also the accord provides that all existing agreements are unaffected which means that the obligations of Yugoslavia under the Covenant of the League of Nations56 and under her pacts with the Little Entente and France remain intact. (It is, nevertheless, my impression from talks at the Quai d’Orsay that the French Government is far from pleased at the conclusion of this Italo-Yugoslav accord. They try to put the best face on it and point out that France in the past tried to bring Italy and Yugoslavia together when relations between these two were at the breaking point. However, the difference between the European situation at that time and at the present time is too obvious to require comment; furthermore, it would seem likely as indicated in my 406, March 24, 7 p.m., that the French Government was taken by surprise at the sudden conclusion of this pact.)
In my conversation with Léger I mentioned that the Germans were evidently holding back and that it seemed to me unlikely that Mussolini would now venture to engage himself on a large scale in the Spanish situation. Léger remarked that one never can tell about dictators—they are moved by sudden decision, passion, inexact information. He recalled that Mussolini had gone ahead in the Ethiopian affair at a time when he had England, France, and the League of Nations against him and his success at that time might lead him to feel that he could do much the same thing again regarding Spain. Léger said he felt that Hitler was more cautious and had perhaps a better sense of realities than Mussolini: Hitler against the advice of the Reichswehr had gone ahead with his March 7 coup,57 counting on French weakness at the time and he had succeeded. Last January Hitler had prepared another coup in Morocco but this time France had reacted; Hitler saw that France meant business and he had at once abandoned his position. The question now was whether Mussolini understood the present situation; French opinion, Léger said, would not tolerate Italy going into Spain and obtaining control of that country and of the Balearic Islands.
- Signed March 25, 1937, Documents on International Affairs, 1937, p. 302.↩
- Foreign Relations, The Paris Peace Conference, 1919, Vol. xiii, p. 69.↩
- On March 7, 1936, the German Government denounced the Locarno Pacts of 1925 and reoccupied the Rhineland.↩