740.00112 European War 1939/3187
The French Ambassador ( Henry-Haye ) to the Secretary of State
The Ambassador of France presents his compliments to His Excellency the Secretary of State and, referring to his note of June 21 last,64 has the honor to inform him that the British Command continues to subject our colony of Somaliland to a strict blockade which it tries to justify by the alleged necessity of hindering Germany’s seizure of our possession. From this fact the whole population is suffering intolerable privations as time goes on, privations which the decision recently taken by the British authorities, at the repeated instances of the International Red Cross, to allow the entrance of a minimum provision of milk, has only very temporarily alleviated.
Recalling that the French Government has on several occasions offered to permit the provisioning of Ethiopia through the port of Djibouti and the railroad, the Ambassador of France appeals to the humanitarian sentiments of His Excellency the Secretary of State and begs to request him to be good enough to use all his influence to have cancelled a measure of a severity which, if maintained, would not fail to have the most serious consequences within a very short time, in view of the desert nature of this colony and the obligation it has of drawing its subsistence from outside.
Mr. Henry-Haye is happy [etc.]
- Not printed.↩