741.91/9
The Ambassador in Great Britain (Davis) to the Secretary of
State
London, September 16,
1919.
[Received October
6.]
No. 1330
Confidential
Sir: With reference to the Department’s
telegram No. 5844 of August 20, 4 p.m., and my telegram No. 3039 of
September 13, 2 p.m.,
[Page 712]
regarding the Anglo–Persian Agreement, I have the honor to transmit
herewith enclosed, for the information of the Department a copy of
an informal communication I have received from Earl Curzon on the
subject of his interview with Colonel House.
I have [etc.]
For the Ambassador,
J. Butler
Wright
[Enclosure]
The British Acting Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs (Curzon) to the American Ambassador (Davis)
My Dear Ambassador: I am away in the
country and can therefore only return the briefest reply to your
letter of September 12 on the subject of the Anglo–Persian
Agreement. I shall be quite ready to discuss this with you at
any time, and I only write the present line in order to clear up
the point about my meeting with Colonel House at Paris.
It was with the knowledge and on the advice of Mr. Balfour with
whom I had discussed the matter that being unable, during my
brief stay in Paris, to find the President disengaged, I called
upon Colonel House for the precise object mentioned in my last
letter. The only reason for which I could mention to him the
case of the Persian Delegation, and my sole ground for
preferring that the question of Persia, which the Conference had
for 6 months shown no inclination to touch, should not be
settled there, was, as I told him, that on behalf of the British
Government I was negotiating an Agreement with the Persian
Government myself. On no other ground could I have had any right
to mention the matter at all or to ask that President Wilson
should be informed. On my return from seeing Colonel House I at
once reported what had passed to Mr. Balfour, and upon Colonel
House informing me later that he had passed on what I said to
the President, I assumed and have ever since proceeded upon the
assumption that the American Govt. was at least aware of the
general intention of H.M.G.
I am [etc.]
