711.529/19

Memorandum by the Under Secretary of State (Grew)

Liquor Treaty and Commercial Treaty

At my request the Spanish Ambassador called today and with reference to our conversation of November 208 I informed him that this Government was now prepared to conclude a liquor treaty with Spain and that as already stated to him we felt that the final conclusion of such a treaty should be simultaneous with an exchange of notes providing for unconditional most-favored-nation treatment of exports and imports of indefinite duration yet subject to termination on a reasonably short notice and give both parties the benefit of any commercial advantages thereafter given to third States. I said to the Ambassador that the draft of a proposed liquor treaty submitted [Page 958] by the Spanish Government to our Ambassador in Madrid on July 8, 1924,8a was not wholly satisfactory to us and that we desired to propose certain changes in that draft, notably in Article 1 and Article 6 and by the elimination of the proposed additional clause under Article 3. I explained to the Ambassador the nature of these counter proposals and said that as they were contained textually in the liquor treaty which we had concluded with Italy9 I felt I could not do better than to hand to him the text of our treaty with Italy. I said that we should be willing to adopt that text exactly as it stands for the conclusion of a treaty with Spain. I then handed to the Ambassador our note of December 510 proposing an unconditional most-favored-nation agreement and said if this proposal should commend itself to the Spanish Government it would simply be necessary for that Government to send us a note accepting the terms of our proposal which we would acknowledge in due course and the agreement would thereupon go into effect on the termination of the present agreement on May 5, 1925. I said to the Ambassador that while the negotiations for unconditional most-favored-nation treatment had hitherto taken place in Madrid we were making these proposals through him instead of through Mr. Moore in view of the fact that he had taken up with us the question of a liquor treaty and the further fact that we desired to associate the two subjects.

The Ambassador said that he would cable our proposals to his Government immediately.

J. C. G[rew]
  1. Memorandum of conversation not printed.
  2. Not printed.
  3. Foreign Relations, 1924, vol. i, p. 185.
  4. Ibid., vol. ii, p. 691.