841.24/132: Telegram
The Ambassador in France (Bullitt) to the Secretary of State
[Received 7:50 p.m.]
2828. For the President and the Secretary. Daladier requested me this afternoon to transmit the following written message to you:
“Paris, November 25, 1939.
The general arrangements between France and England for the coordination of the economic war effort of the two countries have been completed.
The two Governments have agreed to appoint as President of the Committee for Coordination in London Monsieur Jean Monnet whom you know.
They have decided to create an Anglo-French Purchasing Board in the United States in order to avoid all competition in French and British purchases and to permit synchronization of these purchases with those of the American administration.
The two Governments have agreed that the President of the Anglo-French Purchasing Board should be Mr. Arthur Purvis.
This organization is the result of the common desire of Mr. Chamberlain and myself that the French and British purchases in the [Page 571] United States should be placed and executed in such a manner that they should be synchronized with those of the American administration and that the American Government should have constant information with regard to them and should insofar as possible accord its cooperation.
I thank you for the assurances which you were kind enough to give me through your Ambassador in Paris that the same sort of cooperation which was given by your administration and in particular by the Procurement Division or the Treasury Department to the mission which was headed by Monsieur Jean Monnet last spring for the purchase of airplanes might be given for the collectivity of French-British purchases. I wish to express to you the determination of Mr. Chamberlain and myself to see insofar as possible the same method applied to the French-British purchases to be made by the Anglo-French Purchasing Board.
I am very happy that like Mr. Chamberlain and myself you consider that cooperation with the American administration is the only method which will permit a solution of these problems and I propose to arrange with the British Government that Mr. Purvis who will be in Washington Monday evening November 27th shall receive the necessary orders in this sense.”