Foreign Relations of the United States Diplomatic Papers, 1940, The Far East, Volume IV

756.94/56

The French Embassy to the Department of State²¹

[Translation]²²

Washington, April 19, 1940.

Aide-mémoire

The French Government has appreciated the declaration made the 17th of this month by the Secretary of State, which has reaffirmed the inviolability of the rights of the Netherlands to their insular possessions in the Pacific by placing the recent Japanese declaration²³ in the same framework as the Washington agreements.

It believes that this attitude should be strengthened on the diplomatic level in the following manner:

1. The American, British and French Governments, referring to the recent Japanese declaration, would instruct their Legations at The Hague to assure the Netherlands Government of their loyalty to the principles enunciated in the notes of February, 1922.²⁴

2. The same Governments would make known to the Japanese Government, through the medium of their Embassies at Tokyo, that they interpret Mr. Arita’s declaration as confirmation of the assurances contained in the note transmitted February 5, 1922, to the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands by the Minister of Japan. They would at the same time inform the Japanese Government of the communications which they are making in the same sense at The Hague.²⁵

21. Transmitted to the Under Secretary of State by the French Ambassador in his letter of the same date.
22. Translation supplied by the editors.
23. Demonstration in French text: possibly garble of declaration in telegram.
24. For the American note, see Department’s telegram No. 3, February 3, 1922, to the Minister in the Netherlands, Foreign Relations, 1922, vol. i, p. 45.
25. In telegram No. 493, April 17, 5 p.m., the Ambassador in France reported that the proposal presented in the aide-mémoire was made to him by an official of the French Foreign Office (756.94/33).