851.30/188a: Telegram

The Secretary of State to the Chargé in France (Tuck)

430. You should transmit to Laval as soon as possible a message in the following sense:

The President proposes that if the French Government agrees that the French naval units now at Alexandria be withdrawn by way of the Suez Canal, the Government of the United States, by agreement with the British Government, will grant safe passage to Martinique where they will not be used by the United States or British Governments but where they will be immobilized on the same basis as the French warships now at Fort de France,19 for the duration of the war, with the assurance that at the termination of the war they will be restored to the French people.

The United States and British Governments agree to periodical relief and repatriation of the crews after they have reached Martinique on the same basis which would have obtained had the ships remained at Alexandria.

The President proposes that this arrangement be entered into irrespective of whether the fall of Alexandria becomes imminent, since these ships would in any case be in danger of enemy attack there.

Inasmuch as these ships have, from the beginning, occupied a special and are now in a precarious situation, they are not within the operative provisions of the armistice agreement and hence the proposed arrangement could not be said to be violative of that agreement.

Hull
  1. For correspondence regarding the French warships at Martinique, see Foreign Relations, 1940, vol. ii, pp. 505 ff.