811.4611 France/161
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Under Secretary of State (Welles)
The French Ambassador93a called to see me late yesterday evening and showed me a message which he had received from his Prime Minister instructing him to obtain a personal interview with the President in order to take up the question dealt with in the document attached herewith94 which he left with me.
When I spoke with the President this morning the President said that there was really no use in his seeing the Ambassador since he could reply to the inquiry made through me. He asked me, consequently, to tell the Ambassador that of the destroyers mentioned, the first would not be launched for another six months, and the last of the lot would not be launched for at least a year and a half, and that under these conditions it did not seem to the President that the destroyers would be of any service to the French Government in the urgent situation they described. He further asked me to say that the release of the destroyers mentioned would require an act of Congress which the President thought it was inexpedient at this time [Page 244] to suggest, and finally that in as much as a good many months would elapse before the first destroyer was off the ways, there would be ample time for reconsideration if it later seemed wise to this Government to accede to the request made.
In accordance with the President’s desires, I called up the Ambassador on the telephone and gave him this message. The Ambassador, however, was very much upset and deeply chagrined that the President would not see him personally. He explained to me why he felt this way. He said that he was the first to recognize that the President was so overburdened with official matters that there was no justification for his receiving the Ambassador merely to say personally what he had already communicated to the Ambassador through me. He said, however, that in the message which he had received from his Prime Minister, he had been given to understand that Ambassador Bullitt had told M. Paul Reynaud that the Ambassador did not go to see the President personally except on very rare occasions and had left the impression that the Ambassador had been derelict in his duties by failing to see the President on every possible occasion in order to urge personally the granting of requests of this character. For that reason the instructions he had received had instructed him positively to request an audience of the President and he said there would be no question but that his own Prime Minister would consider him persona non grata to the President if under these circumstances the President now did not see him.
I subsequently explained the matter to the President who in view of these circumstances agreed to receive the Ambassador at 1:45 p.m. today.