811.20 (D) Regulations/5453: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Spain (Weddell)
51. Reference Department’s 18 of January 8 and 32 of January 12. Assistant Secretary Acheson has received the following letter from Noel Hall, British Minister in Washington:
“On the last occasion on which we discussed Spain together, you went over with me the outline of a telegram of detailed instructions [Page 259] which you were proposing to send to your Embassy in Madrid. You may remember that at one point in our talk you used some such phrase as ‘this Department insists that significant supplies of materials essential to the British and ourselves must leave Spain, etc., etc.’ I pointed out that this phrase did not represent the policy of the British Government in dealing with Spain and said that we attached great strategic and political importance to meeting Spain’s economic requirements. You agreed that this was so and suggested that you might include in your telegram a passage indicating that Lord Halifax14 and his staff had urged the British point of view upon the Department.
I refer to our conversation because I have just learned that the British Embassy in Madrid, apparently after discussion with the American Embassy there, believes that the policy of insisting upon significant supplies leaving Spain is the result of pressure exercised upon the State Department by this Embassy.
We are supposed to have put the case for sending supplies to Spain principally on the ground that we need supplies from the Iberian Peninsula. You will, I think, agree that in the absence of the need of both Governments for some supplies from Spain, it would have been extremely difficult for your Government to agree with the policy that we were advocating, but this is quite different from saying that the principal reason why the British advocated the policy was their own supply needs.
It was because I thought there might be misunderstandings on this point that I called your attention to the phrases in the telegram referred to above. The present misunderstanding may have arisen in Madrid before the arrival of that telegram but, in order that it shall not persist, I am sending the text of this letter to Madrid, and also to London.”
Hall’s statements in the first paragraph of his letter are correct. The passage proposed to be included in the Department’s 32 was omitted by inadvertence. The Department, after careful consideration of the British views and those of the Board of Economic Warfare here, could not go further than the proposals in the cables under reference. It was made clear to Hall and should be made clear to the British Embassy at Madrid that any plan for the movement of commodities to Spain from this side at a time when all commodities desired are urgently needed here, as pointed out in our cables, must be based on tangible and reciprocal action by Spain in supplying us with materials which we need. Conversely it was pointed out to Hall that in view of the great efforts being made here to supply our own military and naval forces and those of other nations at war or exposed to attacks as well as our own and their civilian populations, neither our government nor public opinion could support shipments to Spain for their supposed political effect alone.
- British Ambassador in the United States.↩