852.00/6003: Telegram
The Ambassador in France (Bullitt) to the Secretary of State
[Received July 15—4:30 p.m.]
981. I lunched today with Delbos and Sir Eric Phipps, the British Ambassador. Delbos, somewhat to the embarrassment of Sir Eric, criticized severely the British proposal with regard to Spain. He said that he had no information that any such proposal was to be launched by the British Government. He had understood from his conversations with the British Ambassador and from Corbin’s conversations in London that the British would develop some scheme which would be discussed with the French Government and probably then would be launched by the smaller neutral states represented in the Committee on Non-intervention in Spain. The British Government by the action it had taken had withdrawn from cooperation with France in the Spanish affair and had placed itself midway between France on the one hand and Germany and Italy on the other hand. British Ambassador protested that it was not quite midway; but Delbos insisted that it was midway and that the dictatorships would be greatly encouraged by this act of obvious withdrawal of England from close partnership with France in the Spanish affair.
Delbos went on to say that he had not entered a diplomatic protest against the British course of procedure in this matter because such a protest would merely make a bad situation worse. As to the substance [Page 361] of the proposal he was not at all certain that France could accept recognition of Franco’s belligerency. He would discuss this point with the Cabinet this afternoon at 5:30. Today he had received unofficial but authoritative advices from Portugal to the effect that the Portuguese Government had decided to refuse the re-imposition of control by representatives of the Non-Intervention Committee on the Portuguese-Spanish frontier.
The British Ambassador argued that any proposal stood more chance of acceptance coming from England in this manner rather than from any group of smaller states. The essential point was to get the “volunteers” withdrawn from Spain.
Delbos said that he did not believe it would be possible to get the “volunteers” withdrawn from Spain. If the French Government in order to preserve the semblance of a common front with England should feel compelled to agree to conditional recognition of Franco’s belligerency, this act in itself would constitute a halfway recognition of Franco’s right to the status of a belligerent. The whole negotiation then would fall through since Franco would refuse to allow the departure of the “volunteers” and the only result would be that the common front of England and France would have been weakened greatly and Franco’s right to the belligerent status would have received qualified approval.
Throughout the conversation it was obvious that Delbos was extremely shocked to have discovered that in spite of his full and frank collaboration with the British he could not expect to receive the same treatment from the British Government.