751.5 MSP/11–752: Telegram
No. 552
The Ambassador in France (Dunn) to the Department of State
2854. 1. Re Deptel 2612, Nov 4,1 Labouisse and I called on Pleven this morning. I informed him that, following the request made by him and Pinay on October 21 (see Embtel 24582), I had taken up with Washington the matter of increased aid for France; that this had been carefully considered by the agencies concerned; but that it was not found possible to go beyond the statement made in my October 6 letter. I referred again to the statement in that letter to the effect that the final determination of aid would depend largely on the results of the Annual Review.
2. Pleven did not evidence great surprise at this reply. I had the impression that the Govt had already decided on the position they would take in the event of receiving this answer. He said that he [Page 1275] would go ahead with his military budget presentation and the NATO submission. He hopes to have his budget presentation completed and acted on by the houses of parliament before end of year, preferably by mid-December.
3. As to size of budget, Pleven said it would be about 1420 billion francs, but that he intended also to propose a “conditional tranche” of 44 billion francs. The latter would indicate the additional effort France would undertake if full $650 million of United States budgetary support is made available. He said that the 44 billion francs would be used to finance training and equipment and provisions for some 40,000 additional troops. Great bulk not all of hard items planned for Fr NATO forces and for Indochina are apparently covered by basic 1420 billion franc budget. (Pleven pointed out that production segment of budget was at lowest feasible level, and that there would still be serious shortages in some items.)
4. In speaking of size of French military effort, Pleven said that France now had under arms more than 900,000 men (excluding Assoc States national armies) which is more than in 1939. He also stated that if United States troop pay scale used, French budget would have to be equivalent of one billion dollars larger. In this connection, he pointed out that soldiers themselves were not only making extra personal sacrifices, but that, because of low pay-scale, families often had to help supplement personal needs of sons in forces. This he said could be considered as additional taxation.
5. We repeated to Pleven what had previously been said about necessity for fuller information as to production items in military budget. We pointed out that of United States budget-supporting assistance presently set at $525 million, part would be in form of defense support and part as OSP; that it was important, if we were to get on with necessary selection of items to be bought by US, that we have physical break-down of items in production budget; that it would also be most helpful to have information as to assets and requirements of hard items. We made point that this type of information needed not only to enable us to make selection of items, but to make adequate reports to Congress re expenditures. Pleven agreed to give us the information we requested. It was made clear that this was on an informal and unofficial basis. It is our opinion that France will cooperate well in this regard if we handle matter very informally and do not give them the impression we are “demanding” information and want it as basis for telling them what to do.
- Telegram 2612 informed Dunn that the Department of State could only authorize him to go over the same ground covered on Oct. 6 (see footnote 5, Document 542) since no further promises regarding aid over $525 million could be made. (751.5 MSP/10–3052)↩
- Document 548.↩