740.0011 European War 1939/15338: Telegram
The Ambassador in France (Leahy) to the Secretary of State
[Received 7:55 p.m.]
1223. Embassy’s telegrams 1135, September 4, 6 p.m., and 1195, September 18, 11 a.m.71a Rochat told us this afternoon that the policy of the British in “starving out the women and children at Djibouti”, an area which he said is of “no military importance to them” is having quite “an unfortunate effect in a number of important French circles.” Many people, he said, who are not Anglophobe have been “deeply shocked by this evident lack of humanitarian feeling” and he has heard certain criticisms that the American Government “has not exerted its influence with the British” on behalf of the suffering population of that area. (The sufferings are described almost daily with considerable prominence in the local press.) He said, frankly, the Marshal72 himself was among those “shocked” by the “British starvation policy” and that the question was having a regrettable psychological effect upon him. The paragraph in the Marshal’s letter to the President72a with reference to the situation in that area was inserted, he said, at the Marshal’s specific request.