851.85/446: Telegram
The Ambassador in France (Leahy) to the Secretary of State
[Received 5:15 p.m.]
241. The following note, dated February 13, one day subsequent to my delivery of the President’s message58 regarding the use of French shipping in the furtherance of Axis aggression in any theater of war, is quoted as of interest in view of its possible bearing on the entire question of the use of French merchant shipping:
“Mr. Ambassador: By note dated February 7 and in reply to indications contained in the confidential aide-mémoire regarding French tonnage in Indochina which was sent to the Embassy of the United States following the démarche which you made to Marshal Pétain and myself on February 2, Your Excellency was kind enough to inform me that the Federal Government could not ‘accept any analogy between the accord initialed by the French Ambassador at Washington and Admiral Land in regard to French tonnage in the United States and the proposed agreement permitting the use of French vessels in Indochina by the Japanese’. Your Excellency adds that ‘The French vessels in American ports were in the territorial jurisdiction of the United States whereas the proposed arrangement between the French and Japanese Governments deals with vessels in ports of Indochina, a French possession, over which France’s sovereign rights still continue to be recognized by the Government of the United States at the request of the French Government’.
Your Excellency indicates that the Government of the United States ‘considers that any agreement whatsoever which would make French vessels available for use against the United States would be an unfriendly act’.
I have the honor to inform Your Excellency that if it is true that the greater part of French tonnage susceptible of being chartered to Japan is in Indochinese ports where French sovereignty has been recognized by the belligerent Governments of the United States and Japan, several ships are lying in ports in occupied China (Shanghai and Macao). Furthermore, French ships actually in Indochinese ports are liable because of the presence of Japanese troops in Indochina of being subjected by these troops to measures [Page 678] of restraint against which the military means available to the French Government in that colony allow no opposition.
Furthermore, as it has already been pointed out to Your Excellency the Japanese Government has intimated that, failing an amicable understanding with the French Government, it has decided to proceed to the unilateral chartering for its own account of French merchant ships now in the Far East.
It is because the French Government wishes to avoid such measures of restraint and to safeguard for its own use the maximum number of ships of its merchant fleet, that it agrees to negotiate on this point with the Japanese Government the main lines of which negotiations are already known to the Federal Government. The French Government hopes moreover to obtain at this time the indispensable resumption of traffic between the various ports of Indochina as well as between that possession and Madagascar by means of French vessels controlled by the French Government. It can be assumed in fact that in the event of a breakdown of these negotiations, the Japanese Government would not fail to ensure by its own means traffic between Indochinese ports, which is not in the interest of France.
Faithful to its neutral position, the French Government is none the less endeavoring to obtain from the Japanese Government the guarantee that French ships, chartered to Japan, will be chartered under well defined conditions, which would definitely exclude their military use.
I do not doubt that the above indications will be of a nature fully to reassure Your Excellency and the Federal Government concerning the consequences, as regards the United States, of the negotiations at present in progress between France and Japan in connection with the chartering of French vessels. Accept etc.
Signed Darlan.”