462.00R296/4771½
Memorandum by the Secretary of State of a Conversation With the French Ambassador in Great Britain (De Fleuriau), London, July 30, 1931
Late in the afternoon I called on de Fleuriau, the French Ambassador and had a long talk with him. I told him of my visit to Berlin and I thanked him for the kind words he had said to Ambassador Dawes as to my intervention in Paris. He said I owed him no thanks, because what he said represented the facts.
I told him first of the underlying economic difficulty of the German situation leading to its organization in high gear and its necessity [Page 556] for more markets and the importance of some such plan as Briand’s for the abolition of the Mid-European tariff barriers. He agreed with me as to the importance of these matters, saying that he was called a free trader, but in fact was a very moderate protectionist, but he told me he was rather pessimistic as to the success of any movement to reduce those barriers on account of the powerful influence of organized industry over modern parliamentary governments.
We then discussed disarmament and peace. I told him what I had told the Germans on that subject and he recalled that I had told Laval of the importance of the civil government preserving its superiority over the military, with which he said he and Laval absolutely agreed. I had no particular proposition to put to him because I did not consider him a direct enough medium with the French Government and my call was purely personal to thank him for the really important help he had given me, but the call ended in a long and very thorough talk about the underlying features of disarmament in which he expressed himself very fairly and impartially.