500.A15a4/421: Telegram
The Ambassador in France (Edge) to the Secretary of State
629. I called on Monsieur Briand this afternoon. I had only seen him for a moment since he came back from Geneva, and had not seen him at all since his Berlin visit.40 In our conversation I said that, in anticipation of the Prime Minister’s visit to America,41 I was anxious to have his views on the means whereby the situation of the world could be improved through the betterment of Franco-American relations. In this regard, Briand informed me that when he was in Geneva he was approached at various times by different delegates who asked him to what extent progress had been made towards a Franco-American understanding before the General Disarmament Conference, as in their opinion this was one of the most important factors. Briand went on to say that whenever the United States and France came to an agreement it resulted immediately in a general relaxation of the tension existing in the world; and as instances of this fact he cited the Kellogg Pact and the Hoover Proposal. In his opinion, consequently, anything that the United States did to diminish the fear that America might assist commercially or financially an aggressive state would serve as a point of departure for a conference on disarmament which would be successful. With regard to the problem of the means whereby such a conference could be made successful, Briand said that it was his belief that at the present time, when the entire world was hard-up, the scheme for a percentage budgetary reduction would certainly win general public support. Monsieur Briand further stated that, in his conversations with Secretary Stimson, the subject of implementing the Pact of Paris had been taken up; and that in his opinion a formula to this end was not impossible to find. For instance, he felt that the Pacific Pact,42 in the drawing up of which he had played a part at the Washington Conference in 1922, was an example of what could be done; and it was a source of regret to him that this Pact had not been brought into the picture in the course of the negotiations for settling the Chinese-Japanese dispute about Manchuria,43 [Page 532] which the League of Nations had been called on to handle. Briand stated that the French understood perfectly well that America would not enter into any formal alliance and that she would not agree to any plan whereby the decision as to who had violated the Pact or who was the aggressor in any particular case would be submitted to an outside authority. However, it was his opinion that the French would be completely satisfied with an understanding with America to the effect that every case of this sort would be examined and decided through consultation with the other powers when any war started.
Two or three different times Briand took occasion to emphasize the fact that he did not believe that any agreement on this matter or any proposal along these lines should be made known to the world or concluded until the very eve of the conference on disarmament. The French elections are not far off; and it would be a very bad thing to allow an arrangement of this kind to be criticized and attacked over a period of several months prior to the opening of the conference by political groups in opposition. In his opinion, if an agreement along these lines could be made known immediately prior to the opening of the conference, it would result in increasing enormously the moral strength of the conference, and would thereby improve greatly the atmosphere, and make the tasks much easier. It was to be taken for granted that these questions would be taken up in the conversations between President Hoover and Laval in Washington; and he had the highest hopes that these conversations would do a great deal of good, especially as the mere prospect of their being held had been of great assistance to the successful Berlin visit of the Prime Minister and himself.
- Telegram in two sections.↩
- September 27–29.↩
- Prime Minister Laval was in the United States October 22–26; see vol. ii, pp. 237 ff.↩
- Signed at Washington, February 6, 1922, Foreign Relations, 1922, vol. i, p. 276.↩
- See vol. iii, pp. 1 ff.↩