Office of the Historian

740.00112 European War 1939/3723: Telegram

The Ambassador in France (Leahy) to the Secretary of State

Vichy, October 24, 1941—1 p.m.
[Received 2:03 p.m.]

1367. Further instructions are being telegraphed this morning to Henry-Haye to request our intervention with the British to obtain [Page 595] some relief for the population of Djibouti. This question, Lagarde73 tells us, continues to cause much bitterness in Government circles here. He feels that any relaxation of the severity of the blockade against the civilian population of that area might be “particularly opportune” now in view of the “Marshal’s present shocked feelings over the mass execution of hostages by the German authorities.”

Leahy
  1. Ernest Lagarde, Chief of the Africa-Levant Section of the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs.↩