740.0011 Mutual Guarantee (Locarno)/25
Memorandum by the Secretary of State of a Conversation With the German Ambassador (Maltzan), March 16, 1925
The German Ambassador called to inform me of the substance of a proposition which had been made by Germany to France and England for a joint security pact to secure France.30 He did not have the complete copy but had some memoranda showing the general nature of the pact and said he wished that the American Government should be informed. It appears that in one of these propositions made in 1922, it was proposed that France, England, Italy, and Germany should guarantee France’s security to the Government of the United States.31 I told him I could not see why this should be made to the United States as we were not authorized to join in any such guarantee. He said he understood that perfectly. He also said that the guarantee which they now propose had been delivered to England by the German [Page 21] Ambassador in London who had given a copy of it to the American Chargé d’Affaires at the London Embassy last Friday and it would undoubtedly be sent to us. I made no comment on the nature of the guarantees other than expressed above. He then said that I probably remembered that a good deal had been said in the newspapers about Germany joining the League of Nations, especially the invitation received by Germany last September, that this invitation had been renewed or at least conversations had taken place about Germany’s joining. He said that Germany insisted on assurance that she would have a member on the Council, that she objected to Article XVI and some other objections. He said he wished to inform me that the matter was under consideration. He was not, of course, asking the approval of the American Government but was informing me so that if we had any objections or suggestions, we could state them to him. I told him, speaking for myself and not for the President, that it was a matter entirely for Germany to decide, that we are not members of the League and, therefore, not interested, and that the German Government should exercise its own judgment in the matter and that we had no suggestion to make one way or the other about it. He talked as though this joining might be a part of the plan for the general guarantee of security to France and I told him, of course, that as we could not join in any such guarantee we ought not to express any opinion about it.
- The German proposal was transmitted to the French Government on February 9; see Great Britain, Cmd. 2435, Miscellaneous No. 7 (1925): Papers Respecting the Proposals for a Pact of Security Made by the German Government on February 9, 1925.↩
- See Foreign Relations, 1922, vol. ii, pp. 203 ff.↩