500.A15A4/1070: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Acting Chairman of the American Delegation (Gibson)
110. For Gibson and Davis. I am very grateful for the valuable information regarding Herriot’s views contained in the Delegation’s 198,17 and feel that a meeting with MacDonald, Herriot and Bruening before the Lausanne Conference should prove most helpful. I leave to your discretion the manner of informing Bruening of the situation and will approve whatever decision you may make. Do you anticipate any reluctance on Bruening’s part to come? Would not a conversation between Sackett and Bruening be sufficient? Is there not a danger that to the public at least such a meeting immediately before the Lausanne Conference is likely to become confused with the reparations issue and consequently the impression be created that the Delegation was acting as an intermediary on that subject as well as disarmament? Is there any likelihood that Dolbeare’s previous banking connection in Berlin might handicap him there or revive publicity here on that subject? Might it be advisable to await MacDonald’s answer and then have Rumbold and Sackett see Bruening, thus carrying out the idea of staging Franco-German conversations on disarmament under the joint auspices of Great Britain and the United States? I ask these questions merely by way of suggestion.