740.0011 Pacific War/1837
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Acting Chief of the Division of European Affairs (Atherton)
[
Washington
,] January 27, 1942.
The French Ambassador called on me today at his request. He informed me:
- 1.
- That subsequent to our conversation of last Friday, the 23rd,11 he had cabled his Government urging them not to permit High Commissioner DeCoux to take any action in the Far Eastern situation that would give any basis for the allegation he was acting “in conjunction with or under Japanese duress”. The Ambassador felt that Commissioner DeCoux’s speech recently reported was made before Vichy had a chance to communicate with him in Saigon.
- 2.
- The French Ambassador further stated that the French diplomatic mission in Chungking has been instructed to point out to Chiang Kai-shek that while Chinese bombing of territory in Tonkin in which there was a military objective might be condoned, it was impossible to accept these recent Chinese bombings of small Indochinese villages away from all military objectives. Furthermore, such action gave the Japanese a very good arguing point in urging collaboration which so far the Indochinese Government was resisting beyond the limits of what was contained in the agreement.
[Here follow two sentences on other subjects.]
- Memorandum of conversation not printed.↩