840.51 Frozen Credits/689

Memorandum of Conversation, by the Assistant Secretary of State (Berle)

Mr. Truelle79 came in today, at his request, to plead for an immediate release of funds to pay the French diplomatic establishments in the American hemisphere.

I replied bluntly that the question of the Martinique planes was not settled yet.

Mr. Truelle said that he saw no logical connection between the two, and continued his plea.

I said that I ran into this as an obstacle in every attempt to reach solutions of these questions.

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Mr. Truelle said that he did not see that the existence of planes in Martinique threatened us at all; that they could not be moved, and we had, in any event, overwhelming power in the Atlantic. I said that that maybe suggested a solution. Since the excuse for not letting the planes come back was that it might lead to reprisals, possibly they would like to be in a position of our taking the planes, rather than asking for them. I said we did not want another Dakar incident, but that if it would help any for us to “take” the planes, maybe that could be worked out. Truelle said that he could not comment.

I said that what we really wanted, of course, was the return of the planes; we might send them to Indo-China, were they useful there; otherwise keep them here for our own national defense. I was aware of Mr. Welles’ conversation with the French Ambassador, and begged to note that the effect of the Vichy government’s refusal to do something about these planes had, in substance, amounted to helping the Indo-Chinese government to hand over the province to the Japanese, in the sense that it had left them undefended before an invading army. For this reason I could not see any real reason why some solution could not be found in the matter.

Mr. Truelle continued to plead for his money.

A. A. Berle, Jr.
  1. Jacques Truelle, Counselor of the French Embassy.