851.85/510: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Consul General in Martinique (Malige)
99. Personal for Reber. Your 167, May 13, 6 p.m. Since we have insisted with French Embassy that all negotiations must be with Admiral Robert we do not expect to receive from the French Embassy the text of the French Government reply. However Admiral Hoover states a copy is en route by air mail which may arrive tomorrow. In the meantime we are considering Admiral Hoover’s suggestion of a commission to Fort-de-France to complete these negotiations and the Admiral is being requested by the Navy Department to formulate his ideas as to Navy and/or Army personnel. The Department of State would appreciate your views on the question of civilian members of the commission and your recommendations as to what civilian departments of the Government should be represented.
In the meantime while the effective steps to immobilize warships and planes are exclusively in the hands of the Navy Department, we are considering the necessary measures of control and censorship we would wish to impose on communications from French Caribbean possessions. An effective censorship of all of this through American channels will undoubtedly be one of our final non-negotiable demands. The Department would be interested in receiving your views as to the best method of accomplishing this end.
In one way or another present arrangements necessitate prior agreement with the United States before any French merchant ship can sail from French Caribbean possessions. We recognize that the economic life of the area has in the past been in large measure dependent on French commercial tonnage. We visualize that in the future the economic life of the area may depend on the increased use of this French tonnage. It is not our intention to insist on taking physical possession of this French commercial tonnage now in French Caribbean possessions but an attempt to sabotage it would have, during the war period, an adverse effect on our economic assistance to these possessions and likewise would deprive the French people of this commercial tonnage asset in the post war period.