File No. 763.72/3274
The Ambassador in Argentina ( Stimson) to the Secretary of State
[Received 8 p.m.]
I have had an audience with the President on the Argentine answer to the German note and on the answer they shall make to mine probably to-morrow. The Minister for Foreign Affairs stayed at my request and took a memorandum of the conversation. In the main the President said that the Argentine conception of international law and the intellectual attitude they would assume was at one with ours; but that we were in front of the conflict, while their remoteness and the absence of concrete injury to Argentine rights made the form of their reply appear different. But that diplomatic intelligence would clearly perceive that their reply to Germany was au fond identical with ours. That this reply, “to use my own words,” left all doors open; and in case of future concrete injury to Argentine interests they were prepared to take any steps the [Page 226] situation might require at any time. Our ends were the same. But they said that their written reply must be almost limited to the quotation of their reply to Germany. It might express sympathy for the United States in the present situation; but it would be difficult even to incorporate also a phrase of sympathy for our ends, in a public correspondence at so critical a juncture. In conclusion and apart the Minister for Foreign Affairs assured me that the United States “might trust him accordingly.”