Office of the Historian

340.1115A/3346a: Telegram

The Secretary of State to the Acting American Representative to the French Committee of National Liberation at Algiers (Chapin)

Washington, January 28, 1944—midnight.

308. The Department does not wish to place American diplomatic and consular officers or other American officials in the embarrassing position of not being able to assist qualified American nationals in liberated areas if they are excluded from any general relief measures which may be available to aliens in those areas from public funds derived in part at least from the United States. Such recommendations as you may make in accordance with paragraph 5 of Department’s 2188, November 18, 1943,4 with respect to reduction or termination of financial assistance when commercial banking facilities for transactions in foreign exchange become available (as contemplated by War Department’s Tarn 100, December 7,5 to Eisenhower6 for FHMGS7) should accordingly be formulated with due consideration for such factors. Even after reestablishment of commercial banking facilities, it would seem reasonable to continue on a provisional basis financial assistance to qualified American nationals unable to obtain funds from the United States or to benefit from United Nations or other general relief measures applicable in liberated areas, provided that such American nationals intend to return to the United States at the earliest opportunity. Such assistance would of course cease definitively if at any time the recipient should refuse an opportunity to be repatriated, except in those cases where the officer in charge is satisfied that the recipient is physically unable to undertake the voyage of repatriation. All such cases should be promptly reported to the Department for review.

[Page 1194]

You should appropriately inform those charged with extension of financial assistance to qualified American nationals in liberated areas.

Hull
  1. Foreign Relations, 1943, vol. i, p. 130.↩
  2. Not found in Department files.↩
  3. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, at that time Commander in Chief, Allied Forces, North Africa; he became Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, December 31, 1943.↩
  4. Military Government Section of Army headquarters at Algiers.↩