EMBASSY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. ill/, 2&9 "111 >\v^

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1 3, EMBASSY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ill/, 2&T$^5T»$gQtember ll.^f;33 *. 2&9 "111 >\v^ I have not written you for a long time, but you are familiar with the reasons. We are going through a most trying period and it is a terrible strain on us all. The Consolidation Plan, substantially as I outlined it to you some weeks ago, has been approved by the Embassador and I believe that the despatch and diagram may already have gone off to the Department, although the war broke about the time that they were to be sent off and there has, of course, been a great deal of resultant confusion. The plan is only suitable for peace time operation and I suspect that our recommendations will be in shortly to reduce the number of our people to a considerable extent, in order to meet the current requirements here following the completion of our tremendous job of evacuating the.american tourists and residents* The Honorable George 3. Messersmith, Assistant Secretary of State, Washington, D. C. We

2 - 2 We are all working here (State Department personnel) at top speed, from early in the morning until night, every day in the week and it has begun to tell. I think no time should be lost in removing from the building and repatriating home the services of the Government here which are no longer essential or useful, such as, for instance, the offices of the Treasury Attache" and of the Agricultural Attach^, many of the people in the Commercial Attache's Office and quite a number of other services or individuals. Many of these people have helped very much by acting as volunteers to aid Americans in our evacuation problem, but the liquidation of that will have taken place before very long and then they will be twiddling their thumbs as well as constituting an onerous problem for us in the event that Paris is seriously bombed and we have to remove out of here quickly* The routine services of all the Ministries of the French Government have been or are being transferred to the Chateau country, in an area below Tours, on the way to Angers The Ambassador asked me to make a hurried trip down there a few days ago in order to look over the Chateau de Cande, which is the property of Mr. Charles Bedaux (it was in this Chateau, as you remember, that the

3 - 3 - the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were married). Part of the property has already been taken over by the military, hut not the Ohateau, and the Ambassador has informed Mr. BedauX and the French Government that he has taken the property over for eventual occupancy in the event that the situation here becomes such that he will be unable to live and carry on business in Paris* The Bedaux place is much smaller than it sounds and there will only be six double bedrooms, most of them with bath, available to the Ambassador and his secretaries, since Bedaut and his wife wl 11 retain two rooms and bath. The place would appear much too small to function as a temporary chancery, but it would serve very well as the Ambassador's residence, with accommodations for certain selected people and his code room. I was also instructed to get in touch with Captain Steele, a former Military Attache in Paris who married very well, and who is now living with his wife in another Ohateau a few miles away from Cand. Steele offered his Chateau to the Embassy last September, when the war scare came then, but it was not accepted. It appears now that the Chateau has been earmarked for n some high French functionary"", but not aotually requisitioned. The

4 - 4 - The Ambassador was so angry when he 1-earned the manner in which the various Ministries in the Government and their subordinates are laying hands on these attractive little chateaux in the comparatively safe Touraine area, without any preliminary notice of any kind to the Diplomatic Corps, that he immediately informed the foreign Office that he was taking over this chateau as well as the other one. The addition of the Steele chateau would, in case of necessity, give us about a dozen more sleeping accommodations, as well as rooms that could be used for office purposes, and it seems well to have these two properties (which will cost the Government absolutely nothing for rental purposes) on hand for emergency. Obviously, we shall have to keep in Paris, in any event, a limited staff for protection purposes, as long as there are any people around here to protect, but I believe that the Ambassador and Murphy are contemplating asking the authorization of the Department, if necessary, to transfer many of our routine actiyities to the office in Nantes or the office in Bordeaux op some new office which might be established in Tours in the event that Paris is evacuated. My

5 - 5 - My own work here is necessarily piling up as the services in the Foreign Office with which I am customarily la contact are down near Tours establing themselves in chateaux in that area and not in a position yet to even talk intelligently over the telephone. This is not much of a letter, but it will give some idea of what I have been doing - aside from assisting Murphy "in handling visitors and so on. It is exasperating the way the old residents here refusedto get out and move until they actually heard the sirens and even now great quantities of them have entrenched themselves here and in the neighborhood and refuse to budge. Our Passport Section has been approached by a number of people who have not had their passports renewed for twenty or thirty years, but are native Americans and have been carried along on identity cards issued by the long-suffering French Authorities irrespective of the absence of American passports. Mother is staying outside of town on the Orleans road {road leading to the Chateau Country) and, as the place is about 2 miles away from Paris and isolated, I think it is about as safe and satisfactory as any I could fin«l. There has been no shortage of gasoline and I am thus far communing every day. The

6 - 6 - The Ambassador has urged all members of the staff to get out of Paris before nightfall, as he believes that when the bombing starts most of it will happen at night. This has created a serious situation for our personnel, as it is very difficult to find quarters outside of town which may be used for commuting purposes. Furthermore, there is the element of expenses for such people, as the members of our custodian staff, some of whom make around a dollar a day. Transportation back and forth for the people without rolling stock of their own is another, difficult problem as rail services have been greatly reduced and the autobuses have been taken off entirely. This mess will all settle itself, of course, and I have no doubt that eventually we shall get used to air raid warnings and deserted, dark streets and the absence of all the atmosphere of the old Paris. With cordial wishes to you and Mrs. Messersmith, Sincerely,//