867.24/184: Telegram
The Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Winant) to the Secretary of State
[Received 6:50 p.m.]
4810. Your 4159, October 1, 9 p.m., was discussed with Mr. Eden on October 2d. I confirmed my talk the same day by a personal letter transmitting substance of your telegram. I have today received from Mr. Eden the following letter dated October 8th.
“Many thanks for your letter of October 2d in which you were so good as to enclose a copy of a telegram about lease-lend supplies for Turkey.
We are, as you know, most anxious that Turkey should benefit as much as possible from the provisions of the Lend-Lease Act. The appropriations voted by Congress for material permitted to be supplied under the Lease-Lend Act, though generous, are not unlimited and do not, as you are aware, cover all our requirements, present or anticipated. The best means therefore of assuring deliveries to Turkey is to release whenever possible the supplies she wants from material allocated to us and covered by our share of the defence aid appropriations.
On the other hand much of the material for which the Turkish Government are asking us, e. g., certain types of ammunition, A T guns, et cetera, is not likely to be available for a considerable time in the United States or elsewhere. It will be appreciated that we do not wish to fill up the appropriations by earmarking any part of them for material, the supply of which cannot be made either this year or next, and need not therefore be covered by our present or forthcoming allocation. I believe that this may explain the statement [Page 908] in the second paragraph of the telegram which you enclosed that the holdup in the release of supplies to Turkey is the result of a specific request from the British Purchasing Commission that the financing of certain items should be deferred.
The British authorities are perhaps to blame for this in that in considering the various lists of Turkish requirements we have not made it clear to the Turkish Government or the British Purchasing Commission that in passing this or that item to the United States we had not expected that supply would prove possible in the near future. The Turkish lists are coming up for review by the competent authorities here and when this review has been completed we shall make clear both to the Turks and the British Purchasing Commission what the position really is. When this has been done I feel certain that the Turkish Government will realize that they are obtaining from the United States the maximum aid which the war situation elsewhere permits.
His Majesty’s Government have much appreciated the efforts made by the United States of America to meet their desire that supplies for Turkey should not be held up; they regret that the rather complicated circumstances explained in the preceding paragraphs should have led the Turkish Government to doubt unjustly the good will of the United States of America towards them and they are instructing His Majesty’s Ambassador at Angora to make clear to the Turkish authorities that the United States of America are to their knowledge responding generously to Turkish requests for assistance in the matter of war supplies.
I might add that we have now ourselves received a telegram from Washington on this subject to which we shall be replying on the lines of this letter.”