851.515/206: Telegram
The Acting American Representative to the French Committee of National Liberation (Chapin) to the Secretary of State
[Received June 9—12:52 a.m.]
1894. At Massigli’s request the British Chargé17 and I called on him this afternoon. He appeared to be quite agitated and stated that the Committee had had a special session this morning to consider General de Gaulle’s cable with regard to the emission and use of franc notes by the Allied Command (in reading from a cable of de Gaulle’s he let slip the expression used by the General, “counterfeit money”).
The following is a close paraphrase of the identic note delivered to Holman and myself which was approved by the Committee, text of which had been cabled to de Gaulle.
“Information has reached the Provisional Government of the French Republic with regard to the putting in circulation by the Allied High Command in the first liberated French territories of notes payable in francs.
The Government is astonished that the Allied Command should have taken this initiative which has never been undertaken in the past by a friendly army. The practical exigency requiring the military command to dispose of currency in the course of operations is fully realized by the provisional government. Military authorities have always received immediately and without limit such funds as they have requested throughout the whole of French overseas territories. The same system could and should have been put into practice in French Metropolitan territories at the time when the latter are about to acquire their full sovereignty. Within the framework of the agreement, whose conclusion it has been seeking from the Allied Governments for some months, the Government stands ready to take the necessary dispositions.
Since the right of issuing currency has traditionally belonged to the national authority in France and to it alone, the provisional government cannot accord any legal value to the stamped paper (vignettes) which has been put into circulation without its consent. Accordingly it makes reservations as to the political, moral and financial consequences which may result from this action of which it has been apprised.
In this spirit it draws the most earnest attention of the Government of the United States to the grave consequences which must follow in France under existing circumstances, the inevitable recognition of the fact that no agreement exists between the Allied Governments and the French authorities to which the French interior forces refer and upon which they depend.”
Massigli stated that according to advices from London the British Foreign Office had at de Gaulle’s request asked General Eisenhower18 not to issue any proclamation in metropolitan France with regard to the acceptance of this currency and so far as he knew no proclamation had been issued. When asked specifically Massigli stated that the French authorities here did not intend to give any publicity to the matter, at least for the time being.
Saxon19 requests copy be furnished Treasury.
Repeated to London as 203.