File No. 656.119/327
The Secretary of State to the Minister in the Netherlands ( Garrett)
1095. Your No. 2229, March 30, 6 p.m.,1 and 2276, April 6, 6 p.m. In a note to the Netherland Minister2 the text of which is being cabled you, it was stated that the S.S. Hollandia understood to be at Buenos Aires might avail itself of all facilities which the Associated Governments could offer in loading a cargo of grain and proceeding to Holland, provided a corresponding vessel left Holland for a North American port and provided the Hollandia would call at a designated port for examination.
We are prepared to permit two other Dutch vessels from among the number not requisitioned to load grain and proceed to Holland upon corresponding ships leaving Holland as suggested in your 2276. We are discussing this plan with British and shall advise you as soon as their concurrence obtained so that you may officially advise Netherlands Government.
We regard it as most undesirable to create the impression that we will, as a general proposition, permit Dutch ships now outside of the Netherlands to proceed there in exchange for corresponding ships leaving a Dutch port for this side. We understand that there is already in Dutch ports ample tonnage to lift the supplies required [Page 1457] by Holland, and we are strongly of the opinion that these ships alone should be put into this service, leaving the ships now outside of the Netherlands to engage in their customary traffic, which involves the performance of service useful to us. You will appreciate that if principle of exchange were adopted it would result in tonnage in Netherlands ports being put into service only to extent of one-half of total tonnage required for Netherlands domestic needs. The balance would be continuously idle.
We are further disinclined to permit Dutch vessels now on this side to proceed to the Netherlands, for the reason that we would be embarrassed to supply immediately the necessary grain cereals required to supply cargoes, while were ships sent from the Netherlands in accordance with our outstanding proposal this would afford us a longer time in which to arrange to supply cargoes. It must, therefore, be emphasized that the cases of the Hollandia and the two other vessels above referred to are exceptional in character and are permitted only as a measure for relieving immediately the food situation in Holland which according to your statement is temporarily so serious that we should permit in these exceptional cases the sending of ships already on this side for the sole purpose of saving time.