Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, The Far East and Australasia, Volume VI

501.BC Indonesia/12–1848

Memorandum of Conversation, by the Director of the Office of Far Eastern Affairs (Butterworth)

secret

[Washington,] December 18, 1948. [5 p. m.]

Mr. Helb called at his request to make official delivery of the attached memorandum.¹ He explained that were it not Saturday and were Mr. Lovett not so overburdened Mr. van Kleffens would have sought to make delivery of this note to Mr. Lovett.

Mr. Helb continued to say, upon instructions of his Government, that the Netherlands wished to express its gratitude to the members of the GOC for their persevering efforts to contribute to the solution of the Indonesian problem and that his Government, his Ambassador and he himself wished to express special appreciation of the efforts of Mr. Cochran and of the officers of the Department of State to achieve a settlement.

Addressing himself to the subject matter of the memorandum which he handed me, Mr. Helb said that he thought it important that he draw my particular attention to the fact that the Netherlands Government had been influenced in its decision not to resume negotiations by 2 developments:

(1) The fact that Soekarno and several members of his Cabinet had left Jogjakarta, thus making further communications with that Government of an official character impossible.

(2) The statement by the Indonesian Republic to the effect that it would not reply to the last Netherland response to Mr. Hatta’s letter of December 16.

I pointed out that, as regards Soekarno, our information was that neither the Dutch Government nor this Government then knew whether he was in fact still in the Indies or not; that, as regards the second statement, a similar assertion had been made by Mr. Lovink to Mr. Steere and the other Chiefs of Mission yesterday afternoon and that Mr. Boon of the Netherland Foreign Office had subsequently called up Mr. Steere to apprise him of the fact that this statement had been made on misinformation and that in fact the broadcast from the Republic had not said what Mr. Lovink thought it had said.

Since Mr. Helb had seen fit not merely to leave these communications but to enter into a discussion I could not let him leave without any indication of the reaction of this Government to the Netherlands’ resort to force. I told him that, although I was not authorized to define officially to him my Government’s reaction, I felt I could not but say that in my view by the action the Netherlands Government had taken—and I could say this to him, since neither he nor his Ambassador were regarded as architects in this design—and by the manner in which the Netherlands Government had seen fit to bring it to pass the Netherlands as a responsible member of the Atlantic community had done itself a grave disservice and in so doing had done one to the Christian nations. Mr. Helb said, “I share your grief.” I said that very unhappy times were in store for many and I read him the following paragraph from The Hague’s Niact 873, December 18, 8[3] p. m.:

“Following meeting Stikker asked me see him alone, and informed me military action—‘march on Jogja’ would start within 2 hours. He said ‘it simply had to be done’ and went on to explain that his own intervention 2 months ago had staved off earlier action, and that he could no longer hold back such course. He said large numbers troops long overdue return home and morale considerations required action now if they were not to return.”

1. Dated December 18; for text, see SC, 3rd yr., Suppl. (Dec), p. 229. Mr. Lacy was present.