124.516/357: Telegram
The Chargé in Germany (Morris) to the Secretary of State
[Received April 10—3:25 a.m.]
1369. My 1266, April 4, 4 p.m.71 A note was received from the Foreign Office stating that the Embassy’s request for the “establishment of a courier service between the representation of the United States in Paris and the latter’s Embassy at Vichy” could not be granted because of “fundamental considerations”. What these fundamental considerations may be was not stated. I judge them to be nothing more than the oft repeated oral statements that Paris is in the combat zone and that the American representation there is not considered to have diplomatic status in view of the fact that we have an Embassy at Vichy. The note further said that correspondence in the English language could be transmitted through the German courier service between Paris and Vichy thus ignoring the Embassy’s representation that while communication in the English language was known to be accepted the staff for handling it in the volume which would be necessary for our Embassy in Paris was totally inadequate.
I do not believe that the Germans are going to yield on this courier question unless they suffer some corresponding obstacle to their own [Page 515] communication such as difficulty in re-forwarding German courier mail from the Consulate General at San Francisco to Central and South America.
- Not printed.↩