851G.01/25
Memorandum by the Adviser on Political Relations (Hornbeck) of a Conversation With the French Ambassador (Saint-Quentin)
The French Ambassador called on me this morning at his request. The Ambassador said that the matter about which he had come to speak was urgent. He referred to his conversation of yesterday afternoon at 5 o’clock with Mr. Welles,55 and said that later, at 7 o’clock, he had received another telegram from the Governor General of Indochina56 to the effect that, in Tokyo, Mr. Tani had requested of the French Ambassador that the frontier between Indochina and China be closed before the morning of June 21; that the Governor General, under advice of the French Ambassador at Tokyo, had decided to close the frontier from the 20th; that the French Ambassador at Tokyo, while strongly advising that that step be taken, informed the Governor General that he could not guarantee that it would prevent the Japanese campaign against Indochina, as the pressure of the Japanese Army elements upon the Japanese Government was great.
Count de Saint-Quentin made inquiry: “Does the State Department see its way to give friendly advice to the Japanese Government to I refrain from such an aggression?”
I said to the Ambassador that we had been considering, on the basis of his conversation with Mr. Welles of yesterday, what, if anything, this Government might do in the premises; that such consideration was going on at the moment; that I would report what he had now said to me; and that I would try to see that our consideration of the question be speeded up and our action, if and as decided upon, be taken at the earliest possible moment.