740.0011 European War 1939/11031: Telegram
The Ambassador in Turkey (MacMurray) to the Secretary of State
[Received 7:50 p.m.]
155. [For the] Secretary and Under Secretary. On basis of information received from French Mandate authorities in virtue of requirement of Railway Convention,70 Turkish General Staff has advised British here that two trains including 21 cars of war materials have recently passed eastward from Aleppo through Turkish territory. Information of their own indicates that these trains carried some 120 [Page 712] Germans in civilian clothes and that their destination was Mosul. They also have reason to expect early passage of four more trains of presumably similar character.
(2) British here have also received (from source not specified) information that French forces are being withdrawn from other Levant States into Lebanon and construe this as covert French invitation to them to occupy Syria.
(3) Please advise War Department.
- Protocol concerning the establishment of a new railway regime and the winding up of the present operating system, signed at Ankara by France and Turkey, October 27, 1932, League of Nations Treaty Series, vol. cxxxvi, p. 27.↩