890D.20 Missions/10–545

The French Embassy to the Department of State

[Translation]32
No. 809

In its memorandum of September 19, the Department of State was good enough to inform the Embassy of France in the United States that the Syrian Government had requested the American Government to send it a military mission to help organize and train Syrian troops. In the same document, the Department of State expressed its desire to know the attitude of the French Government on this matter.

Referring to this courteous communication, for which it thanks the Department of State, the Embassy of France has the honor to call its attention to the following points:

[Page 1207]

In transferring to the Syrian and Lebanese Governments the so-called special troops, the French Government had no other object than that of granting the requests of these two governments which, invoking their accession to independence and declaring that they were now prepared to exercise for themselves all the functions of sovereignty, were insisting upon the immediate turning over of these functions, including especially those of the defense of the country and of maintenance of order by means of a national army. As the Department of State recalls, these demands of the Syrian and Lebanese Governments have had the constant support of British and American representatives in the Levant.

The American Government will understand that under these circumstances, the French Government cannot but be surprised to see that the Syrian Government, after having itself prepared to assume the responsibilities which the burden of a national army entails, requests, so soon after the transfer of the special troops to its authority, foreign assistance in the organization and training of its troops, preparing thus to entrust to other hands one of the functions of which it so vigorously sought possession as one of its essential rights by virtue of its newly acquired independence. The spirit in which the French Government replied to the desire expressed by the Syrian Government would be violated and, in its opinion, its action deprived of its true significance, if the function of counselor and guide which it has just relinquished in favor of the Syrian Government, at the explicit request of the latter, should be transferred to another Power.

The Department of State will not fail to note that in the event that the Government of the United States should agree to send American advisers to the Levant, the decision would rim risk of being interpreted, in the circumstances resulting from the recent crisis, as participation in an action designed to evict France from the positions it formerly occupied. The Syrian request, if it should become known, could be considered, in fact, by French opinion, only a manoeuvre intended to offend France.

Under these circumstances, a favorable reply by the American Government to the request just addressed to it by the Damascus Government would necessarily appear as an act unfriendly to the French Government.

In informing the Department of State of the foregoing, the Embassy of France wishes to express again its appreciation of the communication which has been transmitted to it, and avails itself of the occasion of this note to renew assurances of its highest consideration.

  1. File translation revised by the editors.