740.00119 E. W./6–2545
No. 616
Memorandum by the Acting
Secretary of State
Memorandum of Conversation
Subject: United States–French Relations
| Participants: | The French Ambassador, Mr. Henri Bonnet; |
| Acting Secretary, Mr. Grew. |
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The Ambassador then said that while he had no instruction from his Government he wished in his capacity as Ambassador responsible for the good relations between our two countries to express to me his concern at the present unfortunate trend of these relations. He said that it was the earnest desire of General de Gaulle and, as I well knew, of himself to bring France and the United States steadily closer together and he felt that the present trend is unfortunately in the other direction. This arises from a number of issues in which France has been given little satisfaction and public opinion in his country, knowing of these issues, is at present developing in a way not conducive to the improvement of our relations.
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The third point is the fact that although an understanding was reached in the talks which Mr. Bidault, when he was in Washington, had had with President Truman and myself2 that a French Army Corps should be permitted to proceed to the Far East to participate in the war against Japan, nothing further had been heard about the matter.
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- For other extracts from this memorandum, see documents Nos. 99, 357, and 637.↩
- With respect to the scope of the Truman–Bidault conversations of May 1945, see Department of State Bulletin, vol. xii, p. 927.↩