500.A15A4 Steering Committee/151
Memorandum by the Secretary of State
M. Recouly24a called to talk with me. The conference was mainly taken up by my answering his questions as to the progress which might take place in regard to Disarmament. He told me of M. Herriot’s proposal and his interest in it, and of the importance which the giving of a pact by this country along the lines suggested, would have in facilitating the public opinion of both France and Germany towards disarming. I told him of my admiration for what M. Herriot had done at Lausanne and how that, in my opinion, had affected favorably public opinion here towards France, particularly after it had not been favorably reciprocated by Germany. I told M. Recouly of the method which I had been trying to follow in the development of cooperation with the nations of Europe. I said I had been following the method which we in America best understood because it was the same as that of the common law: i. e., the method of developing by precedents and decisions. I told him I hoped this might result some time in an Executive declaration on the subject of our relations to the League of Nations somewhat similar to that of the Executive declaration as to the Monroe Doctrine. I told him I had never feared that when the time came any American Government would interfere with the action of the League of Nations towards an aggressor, particularly since the adoption of the Kellogg Pact, because any party proceeded against by the League would also necessarily be a violator of the Pact of Paris and I could not conceive of any American Government seeking to fish in troubled waters on behalf of a violator of that Pact. On the other hand, I said, if we tried to embody our promises in a pact, we faced possible opposition [Page 388] in the Senate which might trouble international amity, while progress the other way by Executive action was in the hands of the President alone; that while we reserved independence of action, the precedents would guide us probably more effectually than any pact. I told him that we were as a nation rather suspicious of legislative acts and pointed out our unfortunate experience with the Prohibition Act.
M. Recouly said he appreciated all this but thought that a pact would have a very great influence in helping France to disarm as a matter of political effect, as well as in Germany.
In parting, he told me he had been in the Philippines where he admired so greatly the progress that had been made, and that he could not see how it was possible for us to give away the Islands and thus throw them back into what he called the melting-pot.
- Raymond Recouly, French journalist and historian on tour of the United States.↩