711.52/426: Telegram
The Ambassador in Spain (Hayes) to the Secretary of State
[Received 2:10 p.m.]
1450. I am cabling separately details of my conversation of yesterday and this morning with Hoare. Meanwhile there is one grave aspect of the situation which I wish to call to your attention urgently.
Hoare showed me a draft statement to be made by Churchill at such time as final agreement with the Spanish is reached in which Churchill would say among other things that it had been arranged between Britain and the United States that Spanish oil requirements in the future be drawn entirely from sources under British control instead of partly from British controlled and partly from United States sources as in the past.
There is nothing in your 1153, April 25, 11 p.m., which indicates to me that you have agreed to any such arrangement. However in the draft of a proposed joint statement supplied to me by the British Ambassador as contemplated in your 1154 of April 25, midnight,18 it is stated in the last paragraph that future loadings by Spanish tankers will be at Curaçao.
The British Ambassador cheerfully assumes that this means that oil will actually be supplied entirely from British sources and that oil control will pass into British hands. I, on the other hand, assume that this is certainly not the case and have so informed Hoare. Any such fateful step would cast away the physical base of our power and influence in Spain, not only with the Spanish Government but with the Spanish people.
Needless to say, if oil control should pass from American to British hands, any impulse for the British to act jointly with us would disappear and British primacy would take the place of Anglo-American joint action.
- Not printed.↩