800.796/5–1844
The Assistant Secretary of State (Berle) to the Counselor of the British Embassy (Wright)
Washington, May 18,
1944.
My Dear Mr. Wright: Will you be good enough to
send the attached to Lord Beaverbrook in answer to his telegram of May
16?
Sincerely yours,
[Enclosure]
Message To Be Sent to Lord Beaverbrook From the
Assistant Secretary of State (Berle),
Dated May 18, 1944
Many thanks for your telegram of May 16. While I have not yet seen the
Hansard text of your speech, I am very clear that the press reports here
gave a totally false impression of what you said, and that your
statement to the House of Lords substantially agrees with my statement
to the Senate Committee, making allowances, of course, for reasonable
differences of emphasis. I expect to have the record in a few hours and
am quite sure that when this is handed over to the Senate Committee the
entire controversy will promptly dissolve. The animus behind it, of
course, is that there are certain interests here to whom the phrase
“freedom of the air” is anathema; and probably there are also some
mischief makers who would be glad to provoke a quarrel between the
Administration and the Senate, or between you and us, and both on
general principles and particularly on the eve of the greatest
cooperative military effort in history, I do not see any reason for
giving any satisfaction to these people along those lines.
[Page 479]
On the documents now before me
there is not the slightest basis for any charge that anyone misled
anyone else, or that the case was not fairly and fully stated.
The record on cabotage is perfectly clear: so far as Britain is
concerned, cabotage was defined both by you and me to mean traffic
between Britain and her Crown Colonies.
The other points mentioned in the press seem not to have any substance to
them.
Best wishes. I will send you a copy of the statement to the Senate as
soon as it is ready.
