862.20210/2071: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Argentina (Armour)
1894. Your 2401, November 28, 6 p.m. The Department approves in principle the suggestion contained in the second paragraph of your telegram under reference but believes that any statement which you might have to use in case the counter-memorandum allegedly being prepared by the Germans is presented, should be brief and couched in most general terms and should avoid any expressions or affirmations, however well founded in fact, which might lead to undignified open controversy with the German Embassy or to any protracted airing of charges and countercharges for the edification of the Argentine Foreign Office and public press. Specifically the Department desires that any reference to monitoring in the United States, to breakdowns of radio intercepts or to censorship intercepts be eliminated.
While in advance of precise knowledge as to what might be the text of the rumored counter-memorandum, it is, of course, impossible to give any final indication as to what the Embassy’s statement might contain, it is believed that it might well include one or two paragraphs along the following lines: [Page 257]
“The Government of the United States has both before and after
the outbreak of hostilities following the treacherous attack on
December 7, 1941, been cooperating loyally and openly with the
Governments of the other American Republics with a view to
combating the Axis subversive penetration of this Hemisphere
which has been aimed at the security of the American peoples
equally. The extent and the nature of this poisonous threat has
been common knowledge to all of the American governments and was
proclaimed in resolutions VI and VII of meeting of Ministers of
Foreign Affairs at Havana. That common knowledge moreover formed
the basis of the agreements freely entered into by the Ministers
of Foreign Affairs of all the American Republics at Rio de
Janeiro. In the words of Resolution XVII of that meeting, it was
resolved that:
The activities thus to be combated have been hemisphere-wide in their organization, so that it was deemed necessary at the Rio meeting to establish, as a semi-permanent body, an Emergency Advisory Committee for Political Defense at Montevideo. The choice of a capital in the southern quarter of the Hemisphere is not without significance.
The Government of the United States, conscious of its own responsibilities and in collaboration with the governments of the other American Republics has used its full facilities to inquire into activities, now notorious, of the hemisphere-wide network of Axis subversive organizations, and in so doing has uncovered many traces of enemy activities which have crossed and recrossed national frontiers. For obvious reasons, particularly since the activities of non-American governments directed against the security of the hemisphere still continue, it is impossible for the Government of the United States to make known its sources of information. Moreover, the incredibly brazen methods employed by Axis agents have been a chief contributing factor to their identification. Finally, the Government of the United States takes this occasion to express its profound gratitude for the valuable information with regard to Axis activities and political interventions in this Hemisphere which it has received from all those governments and from numerous private individuals in the other American Republics who recognize the serious Axis threat to their institutions and sovereignty.”
Please cable urgently any developments.
- Three-Power Pact between Japan, Germany, and Italy, signed at Berlin, September 27, 1940; for text, see League of Nations Treaty Series, vol. cciv, p. 386.↩