TELEGRAM RECEIVED
 
NPL
This telegram must be
losely paraphrased be-                  FROM     PARIS
fore being communicated 
to anyone (D)                                Dated May 16, 1940
 
                                        Rec'd 5:05 p.m.
 
SECRETARY OF STATE,
 
     WASHINGTON.
 
     706, May 16, 6 p.m.
 
     PERSONAL AND SECRET FOR THE PRESIDENT.
 
     I should like to speak what follows into your most pricate ear at the White House and to
have no record of it. It is the sort of hypothesis that we often discuss but never put on paper.
However, I cannot talk with you so here goes.
     It seems obvious that unless God grants a miracle as at the time of the battle of the Marne,
the French army will be crushed utterly. The British, who have not yet sent to France the
quantities of pursuit planes that they have in England to protect their factories, (they have exactly
two squadrons in France) are already beginning to be critical and contemptuous of the French.
That was the tone of the British Ambassador when he spoke to me this morning.
     I think that it may possibly be of the utmost importance for the future of the United States
that you should have in mind the hypothesis that, in order to escape from the ultimate onsequence
of absolute defeat,