852.801/27: Telegram
The Ambassador in Spain (Hayes) to the Secretary of State
[Received July 1—1:42 p.m.]
825. The representatives of the French, British, Japanese, and American Press were summoned to the Foreign Office at 1 p.m. today and given the following communication:
[Translation]50
“Lately the American press (inspired by certain news agencies of the United States which are constantly demonstrating an aggressive [Page 293] spirit toward Spain) has made us the object of an imputation as grave as it is calumnious. After having demonstrated by arguments of absolute evidence the falsity of the accusation that our merchant vessels were delivering bunkers to submarines of the Axis—and perhaps precisely because we roundly defeated that campaign—it is now said that our Spanish ships are sending messages by radio, with the request that they be retransmitted by other ships which may be near, with which, if such messages are in effect retransmitted, the submarines of the Axis can locate by radiogoniometry the ship acceding to the request for retransmission and attack it.
This Ministry is obliged to deny officially this absolutely false and malicious news: Spanish ships have the most formal orders not to utilize in any manner their radio stations except to ask for help in case of extreme necessity. The only exception to this prohibition is the case when no other vessel is in sight in which case only they may make use of their radio to advise of some danger to some navigation, or to give their noon position by international code to the Admiralty Chief of the naval staff. They have been prohibited absolutely to utilize their radio stations on any other occasion, including commercial purposes. Moreover, no Spanish ship has to date crossed the blockade zone with the exception of one, now anchored in a port of the United States and which during its voyage did not use its radio even to communicate its position.”
- In the original telegram, the communication appears in the Spanish language. Translation made in the Department.↩