751G.00/4–754: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Embassy in France1
priority
3520. Eyes only Ambassador. Reference Deptel 35122 containing my personal message to Bidault. We are examining with Defense feasibility and implications of request for B–29’s reported your 37383 with same seriousness and rapidity with which highest officials of our government are attending to every French request. You will of course appreciate that apart from technical factors this request contains serious implications for Philippine government.
I think you should know however I am deeply disturbed by character of these latest requests from French as well as by their tone. Not only do they seem to have been hastily advanced without having been thought through as to their military or political feasibility but there are overtones which suggest French may be preparing to place upon us responsibility if Dien Bien Phu should fall which are all too reminiscent of desperate and indeed hysterical appeals which Reynaud addressed to US in June 1940. I think you should tell Bidault that while we do not for a moment minimize seriousness of military situation and while it will continue to be our aim to do everything possible to help in these critical days we find it difficult to reconcile our decision, taken within twelve hours of its receipt, to airlift two battalions from North Africa to Indo-China with the word which we now have that first battalion will not be ready to move until April 20 and second not until May.
Finally, Bidault’s reaction as reported in your 37294 to serious and far-reaching suggestion for a coalition is even more disturbing. It involves in essence a proposal that US should become a war ally even though not itself directly involved or threatened. Responsible persons do not treat such momentous proposals as reported. I sincerely trust that it was merely preliminary and hasty reflex of a deeply harassed man. If his first reaction becomes fixed, it will appear to us here as a loss of perspective and understanding on his part which however understandable in light of pressures he is enduring hardly reflects a frame of mind conducive effective collaboration between our two governments in this difficult period. All your efforts and ours must be directed toward restoring to Bidault and other French leaders a sense of perspective which the times require as well as to instill in them [Page 1275] courage and poise to move boldly and rapidly on a broad front to maintain cause of freedom in Asia with which position of France as world power is inextricably bound.