550.S1/487: Telegram

The Secretary of State to the American Representatives on the Organizing Committee for the Monetary and Economic Conference ( Davis and Sackett )

59. For Sackett. Your Nos. 10, January 20, 10 a.m., and 13, January 22, 4 p.m. This Government actively favors the suggestion transmitted to you by Simon’s secretary regarding the declaration which the Organizing Committee should make regarding the date of the Conference. You are instructed to support it. It is greatly to be desired that this proposal should come from the British or other member of the Organizing Committee. If you should find, however, that this suggestion is not carried through and an effort is made to set a precise date, you may announce that the judgment of the American Government is in the sense of Simon’s suggestion and that this Government does not think it wise or advisable to fix the time now; this matter must be left for the new administration to pass upon in the light of all the circumstances confronting it.

You are further instructed to make at a suitable moment during the meetings of the Organizing Committee a statement with the general purpose suggested by you in your No. 10. That statement should run as follows:

“I am instructed by my Government to make it entirely clear (as the experts themselves have unquestionably already stated) that the American members of the Preparatory Committee of Experts in any views they have expressed or may later express are not to be deemed as setting forth the official opinions of the present Government of the United States or of the incoming administration. Nor is American approval of the time of the convocation of the Conference to be deemed by implication or otherwise to commit the American Government to any policy in respect to the debts owed to it.”

You may if you consider it advisable informally explain that you make this statement in order to avoid possible though unlikely misunderstanding. The American Government in reserving completely its freedom of action does not of course thereby mean to impugn the actions of the American members of the Experts Committee or of the full Committee.

The preceding decisions have been agreed to by President-elect Roosevelt. Norman Davis has also been consulted.

Repeat to London as Dept’s 18 and Paris as 18 as strictly confidential.

Stimson