751G.92/132: Telegram
The Chargé in France (Murphy) to the Secretary of State
[Received 8:20 p.m.]
1150. Chauvel stated that the news from Thailand was more encouraging. For the first time in 3 weeks the French have received direct telegrams from Bangkok. (It will be recalled—telegram Number 1094, December 6, 7 p.m.78—that the Thai had stopped all cable communications between the French Legation at their capital and the Foreign Office here. The latter has, however, been receiving some delayed cables transmitted by air mail from Bangkok to Hanoi and cabled from there.) The cable which he showed us quoted a Thailand Government communiqué which was quite moderate in tone and indicated a willingness to settle difficulties with the French on the basis of appropriate frontier demarcation along the Mekong (which the French had already expressed a willingness to discuss upon ratification of the nonaggression pact).
[Page 242]On the basis of this communiqué the Foreign Office is instructing the new Minister at Bangkok to express satisfaction to the Thailandese authorities and to inquire how Thailand expected negotiations to be carried on when the Thai Minister has departed from Vichy and the French Minister at Bangkok is not permitted to cable his Government.
Chauvel also read excerpts from a lengthy telegram transmitted a few days earlier via Hanoi in which Garreau79 discussed a conversation with his British colleague at Bangkok. The latter, according to the telegram, had said in reply to an inquiry that the British were in no position to endeavor to restrain the Thailandese in their attitude toward Indochina, as such an attempt would only throw the Thailandese more and more under Japanese influence. According to the telegram, Crosby had proceeded to say that even if he were in a position effectively to take such a step he would not do so; it was much more to British interests for the defense of Singapore to see aggressive Thailandese troops on the Mekong as a defense against Japanese forces pushing through Indochina with the Malay peninsula as their probable ultimate objective. Chauvel said that he was somewhat perplexed by this telegram as he has been as regards British policy toward Indochina for some time. He does not know whether Crosby is merely the “old colonial” type of British agent, thinking in terms of playing off one set of natives against another, or whether he really represents the views of the British Government. Throughout, however, the British and Chinese propaganda, sometimes based on a few facts, attempts to show that Japan has aggressive intentions with regard to Indochina; on the other side, Japanese propaganda, likewise some times based on facts, tends to show that it is the British who are inciting the Thailandese. This is the sort of question which the French, limited to secondhand exchanges of views through the British and French Embassies in Madrid, are not in a position to clear up. The British position, however, taken against the transfer of troops from Djibouti for the purpose of strengthening French colonial defense tends to strengthen the impression in Vichy that they do not wish to reinforce the French hand in Indochina. Any light which the Department can throw on this aspect of British policy in the Far East will be helpful to the Embassy as background here.
Chauvel stated that the attitude of our Minister at Bangkok was quite different from his British colleague and that his influence has had a calming effect, he felt, upon the Thailandese.