740.00112 European War 1939/7544
The French High Commissioner in the French West Indies (Robert) to the Consul General in Martinique (Malige)14
My Dear Consul: I desire first of all to state that if the current military operations have caused brutal changes in the economic life of North Africa, these same changes will have greater and graver repercussions on the economic life of the Frenchmen in the Metropole.
While the American Government proposes to attenuate this harm itself and for the purpose disposes of French tonnage seized in North Africa, compared with which that of the Antilles offers very weak possibilities, Frenchmen of the Antilles regard with much greater favor the case of Frenchmen of the Metropole because it is they who are in more pressing need of aid and who represent in the highest degree the real France gathered about its leader.
Collaborating in the work undertaken by your Government of helping the population of North Africa would therefore be attended here with a guilty feeling of unfairness and with the legitimate fear that, in openly assisting the population of North Africa, Frenchmen of the Antilles would cause those of the Metropole to support the consequences in the form of additional aggravations to their situation.
[Page 653]I must be vigilant in the duties which I bear that any cooperation on my part will not react harmfully upon the interests of the people under me nor, in a more general way, upon French interests.
The French interests are naturally the safeguard of French shipping and also the maintenance for these possessions of a modus vivendi that does not bring German reprisals on the Metropole, a modus vivendi established by the terms of the gentlemen’s agreement of November 7, the terms of which were approved by my Government after being acknowledged by Washington and which your Government confirmed after the rupture of diplomatic relations.
The reciprocal agreement as to neutrality in Article IV of the gentlemen’s agreement appears to me to be particularly satisfactory in this regard for the interested parties.
The collaboration that you envisage should therefore not go beyond the limits of that neutrality. And it then appears to me evident that it can not go as far as the supplying direct of populations that are in an occupied zone and even more in a zone of military operations. What is true in this case for foodstuffs is all the more (true) for petroleum products, even though all together they are, as you assured, limited and reserved for the needs of the civilian population.
On the other hand, I must acknowledge that the use of available tonnage and the exchange of products in this hemisphere constitute two problems which by their nature are joined together. This consideration was presented to me before and I had adopted it only very partially in the form of F.O.B. purchases of Antilles products.
Circumstances lead me today, with a view to acceding to the desire of the Government of the United States, to envisage the possibility of delivering those products under the French flag to a port of the Caribbean or of the Southern Coast of the United States but in any case outside the zone of total war.
Perhaps might I go, in order to give a supplementary pledge of my good-will, as far as to concede that the deliveries of petroleum needed by the Antilles be accompanied by the transport of equivalent quantities between the bases of production and that of the United States in the Caribbean.
This cooperation, intended to lighten the pressure on Allied tonnage in these waters and thus render tonnage available for other purposes, brings no counterpart of appreciable advantage to my own service of supply. The latter will still depend upon products imported from the United States and in lesser measure from Brazil, by the French ships the use of which the American Government has recognized as indispensable to the minimum needs of these possessions (Art. XI of the gentlemen’s agreement).
[Page 654]You are aware how the various phases of the conflict, by their distant repercussions, have too often since the armistice suspended the flow of this traffic and the want resulting therefrom in this island at the present time.
You are aware that the resumption of this traffic, as I envisaged it before your proposal, involved a security that will no longer exist when the cooperation I am suggesting to you will enter in vigor.
I will therefore need a formal guarantee that the insufficiency of tonnage of which we might suffer as a result of the prolongation of voyages or the loss of ships will be compensated by your Government.
These observations are dictated solely by solicitude for the essential interests of French populations—my counterproposals assume therefore that you acknowledge that they are based on those interests and that you admit the latter as the basis for future discussions.
It has been possible to present to you these counterproposals, which I regard as substantial, because they do not involve any act of hostility towards the powers with which France was compelled to sign the armistice and because they eliminate entry into relations with the local authorities in North Africa. These two points, which your note of December 18 did not leave in doubt, remain for me fundamental.
- Copy of translation transmitted to the Department by the Consul General in his despatch No. 335, December 29, 1942; received January 2, 1943.↩