856A.20/44: Telegram
The Minister to the Netherlands Government in Exile (Biddle) to the Secretary of State
[Received October 1—3:22 p.m.]
Netherlands Series 27. For the President. My 26, September 30, 8 p.m. In conversation this morning Foreign Minister Van Kleffens said that the Queen desired him to convey the following as background of what she and her Ministers had in mind.
As greatly as they wished to cooperate with you, they felt bound to state frankly that circumstances both of fact and of sentiment, made them extremely reluctant to call upon Brazil for aid to be sent into Surinam. They also had to think of their relations with Venezuela which had always been delicate. If they admitted Brazilian troops into Surinam, Venezuela could rightly ask why they [had] not sought Venezuelan aid when British forces were accepted at Curaçao. Dr. Van Kleffens digressed to explain that Dutch relations with Venezuela had encountered difficulties for over a century due to the nearness of Curaçao and Aruba and the action of Venezuelan political refugees in seeking asylum there and their not infrequent abuse of such asylum. Since the major part of the British war effort was now conducted on oil from Curaçao and Aruba the Netherlands Government was eager to avoid any action which might conceivably interfere with the flow of oil from Venezuela to the refineries on these Islands.
At the same time, he continued, they fully realized the President’s problem and also the advantages which from a general political point of view would result “to us all” from some acceptable form of Brazilian cooperation. In the circumstances they wondered whether considering that Brazil and Surinam had a common frontier and that there were so many Germans in Brazil the Netherlands Government, in addition to informing the Brazilian Government as an act of courtesy of the projected arrival of the American troops in Surinam, could not ask that Government, which in view of Nazi plots in other South American countries was doubtless well aware of the German [Page 819] danger, to contribute to the common aims in some appropriate form, for instance: (1) By exercising some special measure of military vigilance in the frontier zone adjacent to Surinam and (2) by sending a mission to Paramaribo for the purpose of exchanging information and concerting all requisite measures.
Dr. Van Kleffens said that the Queen hoped that some such form would solve both your difficulties and those of the Netherlands Government, and that she would be grateful if you would let her have your views on this suggestion.
He added that the Netherlands Government felt sure the question of command as raised in your message would present no practical difficulties. There was another point which they thought should be considered. Since there was not sufficient housing to accommodate the full American force and since what Surinam chiefly lacked was aircraft and anti-aircraft artillery, they wondered whether the troops sent in the first instance might not best be aircraft and anti-aircraft.