711.5112France/211: Telegram

The Ambassador in Germany (Schurman) to the Secretary of State

[Paraphrase]

52. Yesterday evening I talked for an hour with Stresemann.14 Since his return to Berlin Tuesday he has been much occupied with political and diplomatic matters, especially the difficulty which has arisen over the arrest in Russia of German engineers, on which the German Government is taking a strong stand. …

Stresemann said, in reply to an inquiry by me, that your war prevention treaties had been discussed by the big five at Geneva only once, and then informally. Briand had said to his colleagues, in lighter vein, that when he had proposed to America a treaty providing that France and the United States should renounce war as an instrument of their national policy toward each other he had meant it rather as a gesture, but now that the Secretary of State’s reply had invested it with importance he might wish in the future to consult them on the subject; that in the meantime he wanted only to ask them one question: Had the American Government communicated with their Governments in regard to it? To this inquiry Chamberlain,15 Adachi16 and Stresemann said that it had.

Schurman
  1. Dr. Gustav Stresemann, German Minister for Foreign Affairs.
  2. Sir Austen Chamberlain, British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
  3. Japanese representative on the Council of the League of Nations.