Foreign Relations of the United States, Diplomatic Papers, 1945, The British Commonwealth, The Far East, Volume VI

741.92/12–1345: Telegram

The Acting Secretary of State to the Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Winant)

Washington, December 13, 1945—8 p.m.

10783. Department is increasingly perturbed at the Siamese situation and believes that a solution can be found only by frank discussion, face to face, with top level Foreign Office officials. Exchange of aide-mémoire is too dilatory and unsatisfactory.

We had practically completed a full statement of Department views and thinking with request that you have such a discussion as soon as possible when a telegram arrived from Bangkok this morning⁴³ indicating that Dening is attempting a third ultimatum on Siamese. The matter is therefore of even greater urgency.

You have, we believe, all copies of aide-mémoire Department has given to or received from British except two dated December 11. Summaries of these are in telegrams 10758 and 10759 despatched noon December 13.⁴⁴

10758 refers to British aide-mémoire of November 30⁴⁵ asking immediate despatch of additional American rice to Southeast Asia as situation there desperate and widespread disturbances anticipated in Malaya, Borneo and Hong Kong after this month unless additional rice provided. Reply dated December 11⁴⁵ informed British that Department has strongly supported their request to the Secretary of Agriculture. At the same time, it urged the British to take all possible steps to increase availability and production of rice and pointed out the adverse effect of low control prices in Burma in securing maximum rice available and stated its belief that proposed Siamese rice levy and uncertainty as to effect of British demands on Siam are having similar result.

10759 referred to British aide-mémoire⁴⁶ in reply to Department aide-mémoire of November 29. British agreed equal American participation on Allied Claims Commission and also agreed that if their belief that Siam can pay Allied claims in full and also rice levy should prove unfounded, they are willing to reconsider in consultation with us. It repeated apologia for rice levy on analogy of mutual aid and repeated view that the allocation of free quotas under the levy should be by the United Nations claiming participation in the scheme.

The telegram from Yost received December 13 [12] is repeated below. The long memorandum which will follow was prepared for use in anticipated teletype conversation by Mr. Acheson with you. Connection unavailable in time, so it is repeated verbatim at Mr. Acheson’s direction. It is hoped this gives complete picture. If there are any questions suggest that you or Allison arrange teletype conversation with Moffat who will be available regardless of hour.

Department wants to stress its serious concern at situation not only on merits, but also on British position here.

Now follows telegram 61 from Bangkok, December 12:⁴⁷

Now follows memorandum prepared for teletype conversation from Mr. Acheson:

Proposed Teletype Conversation With American Embassy, London

Please discuss following matters immediately and frankly with the highest Foreign Office officials:

1. We have just received word that Dening has adopted a completely intransigeant attitude towards the Siamese in the British-Siamese negotiations and directed Prince Wiwat, head of the Siamese Mission, to return to Singapore December 14 and that he has informed the Siamese Government that they must decide before December 15 whether or not to sign the agreement. We prefer to believe, in view of the willingness of this Government to defer resumption of diplomatic relations with Siam so as to give the British opportunity to reply to the Department’s aide-mémoire of November 23 that Dening is acting without British Government instructions in taking this attitude. But because of this development we feel compelled, in response to the Siamese Government’s request for advice, to recommend that they not sign the agreement while the British-American conversations are still pending and a telegram to this effect is on its way to Yost.⁴⁸

Neither point raised in the Department’s aide-mémoire of November 23 is a matter of sole British-Siamese concern, but each is a matter of direct concern to the United States as well. If Dening proceeds with his intransigeant attitude, this Government has no course to follow but immediately to resume diplomatic relations with Siam, at which time we will feel free to offer our comments on Agreement and Military Annex and explain fully our position with regard to proposed tripartite rice agreement and Allied Claims Commission. Please urge the Foreign Office to send word immediately to Dening to reverse his attitude and actions and withdraw the demands for immediate action.

2. Even before we learned this morning of the foregoing development, we were about to ask you to discuss very frankly and urgently with the British the question of Siamese rice and the postwar security clauses.

Please explain that while this Government has consistently disapproved the rice levy it has, in an effort to maintain Anglo-American unity, tried to accommodate itself as far as possible to the British, view point. There are several new considerations, however, now apparent and we believe that it is of utmost importance that the British reconsider their whole position on the rice levy. We feel it imperative that they at least meet the requests made in our aide-mémoire of November 23 to have the amount of surplus stocks determined impartially instead of basing the levy on a very dubious estimate, and we believe most strongly that the proposed levy should in fact be dropped.

(A) The immediate rice shortage in Southeast Asia is acute and will probably remain severe for a long period, probably two or three years. The coming Siamese crop is only fifty percent of normal. The northern Indochina crop is only fifty percent. The Burma crop is substantially off. It is of utmost importance to increase the immediate availability and production of rice in Southeast Asia. The-proposed rice levy and other inflationary factors and the uncertainty attendant upon the effect of the British demands on Siam are definitely detrimental to this basic objective not only directly, but also indirectly by weakening the Siamese Government and by destroying Siamese willingness to cooperate.

For your own information, we have just received word that on December 4 Mountbatten recommended as essential that the British demand for 1,500,000 tons of free rice should be at least partially modified, although without prejudice to an ultimate grant of this total, because the “unstable conditions of the country’s economy” is drying up the Siamese rice supply with consequent grave repercussions all over Southeast Asia.

(B) You will remember the British estimated that there are in Siam 1,700,000 tons of surplus rice, while Yost reported only 800,000 tons available and Yost’s estimate included the existing stock and the new crop. Yost has now secured estimates independently from two different groups Chinese rice dealers. One group estimated 800,000 tons, the other possibly a million but nearer 900,000 tons as available for export during the coming year, including both stocks on hand and the new crop. There is just a possibility, although we consider this doubtful, that in arriving at these estimates a deduction was made from the stocks on hand to supplement a possible deficiency in the coming crop for domestic consumption. That may account in small part, although we doubt it, for the discrepancies between the British and American estimates. This Government could not consider in “surplus stocks accumulated in war conditions” any part of stocks on hand needed for domestic consumption. Even if the actual accumulated surplus stocks on hand at the conclusion of the war were, under these circumstances, somewhat more than the estimates given, a levy on more than the amounts actually available for export would violate, in our opinion, the theory of the British position and would amount to a levy on new production by taking from the following crop the amount applied to any deficiency in the coming crop.

(C) We believe that both the manner of Dening’s negotiating and the severity of the British terms have had a very adverse effect on the British position in Siam and on future Siamese friendship and cooperation which a liberal policy would have cemented. With unrest throughout Southeast Asia, with increasing antagonism which has arisen from the British situation in the Netherlands East Indies and Indochina, and with potentiality of disorders, as the British themselves have informed us, in Malaya, Borneo, and Hong Kong because of food shortages, we consider the Siamese development particularly unfortunate. The British are Siam’s closest neighbors and have had a long record of close and friendly relations. In seeking maintenance of the complete political and economic independence of Siam, an open-door, and the promptest possible reestablishment of the Siamese economy, this Government is not trying to disturb those friendly relations which we consider desirable for the stability and security of Southeast Asia. We do not think that it is too late to reverse the present situation by generous treatment of Siam. We sincerely believe that it would be directly to the British interest in Southeast Asia as well as increasing the flow of Siamese rice and a valuable step in British-American relations if the British would drop entirely the demand for free rice and accept the 20,000 tons per month for twelve months—a total of 240,000 tons—which the Siamese offered voluntarily.

(D) The press has given wide publicity to a UP dispatch from Bangkok giving a harsh interpretation of reported British terms. Strong editorial comment adverse to the British is spreading and there is heavy pressure on the Department to state publicly what it is doing to protect American interests and to secure fair treatment for Siam. Public comments discount the British “state of war” as a pure technicality, not justifying a harsh, or indeed any unilateral, action by the British. We have heard that the question is likely to be raised in Congress very shortly. All of this is extremely harmful to British position here, particularly at this time. We have mentioned this not as a threat but merely as a statement of fact which they should know.

(E) In this connection, it is suggested that the British may wish to consider in their own interest amending certain clauses such as Annex Clauses 11, 12, and 14 (now 13) so as to conform to the specific assurances as to intent and application which they have given this Government. Under those assurances the British gain no advantages from the broad language used, and when the terms are known will receive only severe criticism both in Siam and here which no amount of explanatory assurances can avoid. The text of those terms will be seized on to justify charges of British control, and British explanations will be dismissed as meaningless on the ground that otherwise the terms would have stated accurately British intentions. The Department has accepted the British assurances and is not requesting these changes, but it would point out that it also will be subject to criticism from similar sources for not pressing textual changes.

3. With regard to the points in the British aide-mémoire of December 11 [10] in reply to the Department’s aide-mémoire of November 29, please express this Government’s appreciation of British acceptance of equal United States membership on the Allied Claims Commission. The Department understands by that aide-mémoire that the British also agree that the UK and US will consult as to the effect on the Siamese economy of the payment of Allied claims and the rice levy and that if the total is found overburdensome, there will be a reduction in the levy.

We have been concerned over the proposed British procedure for the distribution of the suggested free quotas of the rice levy so as to insure against dissipation of Siamese assets which would prevent the payment of legitimate claims in full if the total claims and levy are found to be excessive from the point of view of the Siamese economy. We assume that the British answer meets that point affirmatively.

As a matter of fundamental principle, however, we still cannot approve the British thesis that any country is entitled to receive rice from Siam free of charge because that country did not receive Siamese rice during the war. Such a thesis, if accepted, would establish a new principle in the distribution of the assets of a country with which any of the United Nations has been at war. Until now, so far as we know, such assets have been considered to be subject to allocation only in accordance with claims for damages suffered as a result of the state of war. The mere fact that a country was unable to purchase a commodity during the war period does not, in our opinion, entitle that country to receive that commodity free. We would accept the principle that those countries which have legitimate claims against Siam and to which rice has been allocated by the Combined Food Board on the basis of need should be entitled, if they wish, to receive such rice free of cost up to the amount of their claims. But we still believe that the proper and advisable procedure would be a gift of the rice by Siam to UNRRA as the organ of all the United Nations. We believe that American public opinion would consider the course proposed by the British as a division of booty unjustifiably seized from a country which never fought the Allies, which in fact aided the Allies and did not enter the war against Japan only because requested not to by the British and American Governments, and which, to be technical, never even surrendered to any of the countries in a state of war with Siam.

4. We have not as yet received a reply to our aide-mémoire of November 23 although assured orally by the Embassy that there would be a reply very soon. That aide-mémoire raised two points: (1) the amount of the rice levy and (2) the postwar security clauses. We have already discussed in the earlier part of this conversation the point about the amount of the rice levy.

With regard to the postwar security clauses in the proposed Agreement, we cannot follow or understand the British argument stated by Mr. Wilson-Young and reported in your telegram 12848 of December 7. UNO⁴⁹ is to be launched in a few days. No threat to the security of British territory is known here which might develop before security arrangements can be approved by UNO. But even if a crisis developed, there is nothing to prevent the British going to the Siamese and discussing possible measures to meet that crisis. It is scarcely credible that the British must have such a clause inserted in an agreement just to make certain that the Siamese would be willing to talk with the British Empire under those circumstances. The statement that Siam is not obligated to do anything by that clause makes the insistence upon retention of this clause slightly absurd.

We refer again to the earlier British position, to which this Government agreed, that Siam should agree to necessary security arrangements within the international organization. We cannot acquiesce in a clause which gives even the color or appearance of a protectorate, whether founded or unfounded. In our opinion this clause would have that appearance standing alone in a bilateral British-Siamese agreement.

5. Except as stated at the beginning of this conversation in connection with Dening’s actions, we are willing to defer resumption of diplomatic relations for a few days longer in order to receive the British replies to the American views on the postwar security clauses and on the amount of the rice levy as set forth in the Department’s aide-mémoire of November 23 and as amplified in this conversation. Please stress the deep importance which we attach to the British meeting our views in both these matters. Quite frankly, if they cannot meet our views, we are promptly going to resume diplomatic relations with Siam and, of course, when diplomatic relations are resumed, we will feel free to comment to the Siamese as we have commented to the British on the terms of the proposed Agreement and Annex and our position in regard to the proposed tripartite agreement and the Allied Claims Commission. The Department will also probably find itself in a position where it will have to make its views public.

[

Acheson

]

43. No. 61, December 12, 5 p.m., p. 1387.
44. Neither printed.
45. Not printed.
45. Not printed.
46. British Embassy reply dated December 10 was received on December 11, p. 1385; it was the second of two aide-mémoire “dated December 11” referred to in paragraph 3 of telegram 10783.
47. Not quoted in record copy; see p. 1387.
48. Telegram 49, December 13, 5 p.m., supra.
49. United Nations Organization.