SEIZURE OF AZORES

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 148, 20 December 1945, Page 7

SEIZURE OF AZORES

AGREED TO BY AMERICA

TO MAINTAIN ATLANTIC CONVOYS

WASHINGTON, December 18,

The veil of secrecy surrounding the Atlantic Charter negotiations at sea between President Roosevelt and Mr. Churchill was lifted for members of the investigating committee when secret memoranda from the then Under-Secretary of State, Mr. Sumner Welles in August, 1941, were inserted in the record of the Pearl Harbour inquiry.

These disclosed: (1) That the war was then going so badly (the British were reconciled to war with Spain and the loss of Gibraltar) that President Roosevelt tentatively agreed that the United States should seize the Azores as part of a plan to maintain the southern Atlantic convoy route to England. (2) Mr. Churchill objected to the United States proposal to promise all peoples free and equal access to the markets and raw materials of the world which were needed for their prosperity-

(3) President Roosevelt agreed at one time to a parallel warning to Japan (Mr. Welles, testifying earlier, revealed that the proposed parallel warning to Japan never came off).

The memoranda pointed out that the United States came into the Azores picture because a British invasion of the Canary Islands would have left them unable to support a pledge to Portugal to defend the Azores. Mr. Churchill proposed that he should notify the Portuguese of this and sugfest that they ask the United States for assistance.

The memoranda added that in addition to the United States undertaking to send an occupation force to the Azores, it was agreed that the Brazilian Government should be asked to send at least a token force to participate in the expedition.