Ext 5001/41 'PERSIA – INTERNAL (Miscellaneous despatches).' [‎41r] (81/248)

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the present Shah remained on the throne, the army would play a preponderant
role in the country’s affairs and remain the chief instrument of internal security;
for the Americans to concentrate on the gendarmerie and police would be all very
well if they obtained an increasing share of the revenue at the expense of the
Shah’s ideas for his army; the continued presence of General Ridley’s mission
would not entirely solve this problem, but would at least alleviate it sufficiently
give Colonel Schwarzkopf a fair chance. His Majesty’s Government there-
'upon urged the United States Government to let Colonel Schwarzkopf have his
five extra men so as to enable him to take over the police. His Majesty’s Govern-
men found it difficult, however, to contest General Ridley’s estimate that he
would have finished his work by March 1945, so they confined themselves to
asking whether, in the event of Lis task not being completed by that date, the
War Department would let him stay on until he had finished. As regards the
gendarmerie and police, the State Department agreed (a) that this was of first
importance; (b) that reforms should be pressed before the departure of the Allied
troops; {c) that the probable departure of General Ridley made it desirable for
action to be started at once, and they urged the War Department to provide the
five extra men needed by Colonel Schwarzkopf. As regards General Ridley,
they stated that the War Department did not hold out much hope of keeping him
on beyond March 1945 unless he himself recommended it. His Majesty’s Govern
ment took the opportunity to repeat that the problem of co-ordinating the work
of the American Advisers in Persia was still a pressing one, and that the future
success of the American Missions would depend very largely on the degree of
cohesion which the American Ambassador was able to bring about. The State
Department agreed to this and said that the United States Ambassador would
do his best.
5. A Military Air Attache has been appointed to the United States Embassy
in Tehran and to the United States Legation in Bagdad.
Soviet Affairs.
6. The censorship controversy between the British and Soviet authorities
in Persia came to a head during the period under review. On the 30th June the
British Joint Director of the Anglo-Soviet-Persian Censorship had made the
following requesls to his Soviet colleague u —
(a) That British and United States publications exported to British and
United States companies and residents in Persia respectively should
invariably be released.
(b) That article 5 of memorandum establishing the joint censorship should
be strictly observed. (This gives exemption from censorship to the
Persian Government and to the missions of foreign Governments
with which the British, Soviet and Persian Governments are all in
diplomatic relations.)
(c) That publications condemned by the Soviet section should be returned to
the sender through the British section.
The Soviet director undertook to convey these requests to Moscow for
instructions. When informing the Foreign Office of this I added that the
Russians should be called upon to justify their request for the condemnation of
any British publication exported from the United Kingdom under censorship
permit and that objection should be made from our side to anything casting a
slight upon British history, institutions or personalities. In the course of July
the British section of the censorship acquired a competent Russian reader, with
a result that they were now able to study the Russian material coming into this
country. The offensive material divides broadly into three categories :—
(a) Maps showing the 1941 Soviet boundaries. (The Soviet section are
suppressing all British maps showing any other Soviet boundaries,
even though they are expressly marked as showing pre-1939
boundaries.)
(b) Disparaging references to the Polish Government. (This is forbidden
by Middle East censorship stops.)
(c) Books criticising capitalism as exemplified by the British Empire. (The
Soviet censor has been condemning a great mass of British material—
including several copies of Punch —on vague ideological grounds.)
When two months had passed and the Soviet censor had still received no
instructions from Moscow, His Majesty’s Charge d’Affaires informed His
[59—61] ^ b 2