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ANNEX I.
400
Dear Admiral Bailey,
Acting on the suggestion from Vice Admiral Phillips given us yesterday, will you please look this over and see if it offers anything approaching a solution to the defense situation. My idea is that it should replace the Aide Memoire recently handed me by you. I could transmit something like this immediately and I think that
This it would lead to some sort of immediate action. has been written to apply to the Carribean Islands and Bermuda only, for the present U.S. Canadian Defense Board seems to me to have the Newfoundland situation in hand.
1.
With the establishment of U.S. Maval Bases in the British trans-Atlantic territories, the problems of defense of such bases appear to be inextricably bound up in the defense of the Islands. Since there is no transfer of sovereignty involved, both contracting parties must of necessity consider the defense problems as mutual.
With the foregoing in view and mindful of the fact that by their very nature any conversations and agreements arrived at cannot be made public documents or parts thereof and hence cannot profitably be included in the agreement now being drawn for the leases in Iondon, His Majesty's Government proposes the following initial arrangement.
3.
(a) That it designate the Commander-in-Chief, America
and West Indies Station, Vice Admiral Sir Charles Kennedy-Purvis with an appropriate Army and Air Staff to represent His Majesty's Government in such military conversations as may appear desirable to consider mutual problems of defense arising out of the establishment of the bases, to provide for their solution and to plan for mutual cooperation in a military way in such specific situations as may be envisaged.
(b) That the following constitute the initial agenda
for such conversations.
1. Reciprocal use of facilities
2. Principles for establishing command
3.
4.
Paramount interest
and
Mutual cooperation
The mechanism of command
Var Flaming
(a) Responsibility
(b) Mechanism
(c) Provisions for revision.
Under the conditions now existing, it seems desirable that such meetings be held in Bermuda or the West Indies.
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