811.34544/535
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Under Secretary of State (Welles)
The British Chargé d’Affaires called to see me this morning.
Mr. Butler handed me first a letter dated January 465 which he had [Page 56] addressed to the Secretary of State by instruction of his Government advising the Government of the United States that the British Government agreed to the lease of the various sites desired by the United States in the seven locations covered by the agreement of September 2 last, and advancing certain considerations with regard thereto.
In regard to the first paragraph of this letter, Mr. Butler stated that in Mr. Hull’s letter to him of December 2766 certain details were mentioned which were not covered by his present letter, and added that this was due to the fact that the telegram he had sent to his Government covering Mr. Hull’s letter of December 27 had not been received by his Government at the time the instruction covered by Mr. Butler’s present letter of January 4 had been dispatched from London.
Mr. Butler likewise gave me an aide-mémoire67 reiterating the desire of the British Government that the final technical conversations covering the drawing up of the final leases for all of the bases involved in the transaction be held in London rather than in Washington.
I told Mr. Butler that further consideration would be given to this question and he would be promptly advised of our decision in the matter.
Mr. Butler then referred to the letter he had received from the Secretary of State68 indicating the unwillingness of the United States to offer British naval and military forces free and unhampered use of the bases to be built by the United States in the British islands and colonies covered by the transaction of September 2 last. Mr. Butler stated that this decision placed the British Government in a position of inferiority to all of the Latin American countries, since the other countries had been granted free use of these bases by the United States and that this would be greatly resented by British public opinion and particularly by public opinion in the islands where the bases were to be located. Mr. Butler referred particularly to one of the recent addresses of Prime Minister Churchill in which he had emphasized the drawing more closely together of the British Empire and the United States, and of the original statement made by Mr. Churchill with regard to the destroyer-bases deal in which Mr. Churchill had emphasized the desire of the British Government to do all it could to strengthen the ability of the United States to assure its own security and that of the Western Hemisphere. Mr. Butler stated that the communication sent to him by Secretary Hull would be regarded as in the nature of a dash of cold water.
I said to Mr. Butler that I felt quite sure he would realize that no such implication could justly be drawn from the letter to which he referred. I said that the whole policy of the Government of the [Page 57] United States was concentrated upon our desire to assist Great Britain in every possible way short of war and thereby to insure British victory. I was positive that he would recognize that the sentiments expressed by Mr. Churchill were warmly reciprocated by the President and by every other member of the Administration. I added, however, that as he knew, this country had made every effort to line up all of the American Republics in the essential task of assuring the integrity of the Western Hemisphere and of insuring its defense, and that for that reason conversations had taken place with a view towards reciprocal use by the United States and the other American Republics of the naval and air bases throughout the New World. I said it would be manifestly impossible for the United States to insist that this country have the right to use bases within the territories of the other American Republics and not grant them the reciprocal use of bases built and utilized by the United States within the Western Hemisphere. Furthermore, I said, we all of us trusted that this war would not last forever and that some day a sound peace might be found after what I trusted would be a British victory. When the world should come back to normal, it would be very difficult for the United States to justify to the other non-American governments the granting of preferential use by Great Britain of the bases leased and operated by the United States. I said that I wondered whether it would not be possible, since Canada was a power in the New World and would obviously eventually be entitled to make use of the bases to which all of the other American powers had the right, for the British Government to be satisfied with the granting to the Dominion of Canada of the rights accorded to the American Republics. I said, however, that further consideration, of course, would be given the whole problem.
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- Supra.↩
- Note of December 30, 1940, Foreign Relations, 1940, vol. iii, p. 76.↩