550.S1 Washington/434
The Chairman of the American Delegation to the Disarmament Conference (Davis) to the Secretary of State
Dear Cordeul: Marriner, of the Embassy here, gave me this morning a copy of your dispatch instructing him to see the Foreign Office and try to postpone by a couple of days Herriot’s departure. He suggested that I also see Herriot and try to flag him but I thought it better for me not to mix in it and to let the Foreign Office handle it. However, as the Embassy cabled you the Foreign Office thinks it too late to rearrange the plans for sailing. I hope it is not too embarrassing to have Herriot there at the same time as MacDonald. Had I been advised of what the President wanted and asked to do so I am sure this could have been arranged here so as to avoid any mix up.
The French Foreign Office was apparently quite disturbed by a long dispatch from Monick, the French Financial Attaché in New York, setting forth the proposed program for the preliminary meetings in Washington which had been read to him at the Department. They were, I understand, disturbed mainly because they did not feel that Herriot would be equipped for dealing with technical matters of this character since he was going merely to discuss broad lines of general [Page 495] policy. However, after talking with Rueff, their Financial Attaché in London, they calmed down and decided that this was a very good program to discuss although they do not see how they can do anything about silver. They have decided now to send Rueff to Washington as he is a very able and broadminded man. You may be interested to know that he remarked that the best thing that has happened since the war has been your pronouncements against economic nationalism. Rueff should help balance Coulondre69 who is going along and who is not so broad minded.
I can see the advantages of having Herriot go to Washington, although there seems to be some feeling here that it may result in certain embarrassments all around. I am a little afraid his absence may retard somewhat progress on disarmament, because, although he is not in the government he is the leader of the dominant political party and I am afraid Daladier, may not feel justified in taking any really important steps on disarmament without Herriot’s concurrence.
In fact, Lord Tyrrell, the British Ambassador, told me in confidence yesterday that Daladier had told him that if it were not for Herriot’s opposition he would be willing to go to Berlin and to Rome to sit down and have a perfectly frank talk with Hitler and Mussolini now with regard to the proposed Four Power Pact70 and try to reach an agreement on political questions which would facilitate an early agreement on general disarmament.
Herriot’s trip has stirred up a lot of feeling here for which it seems that Paul-Boncour71 is largely responsible because of his jealousy and his desire to go himself. Herriot is quite disturbed because they are all expecting him to get at least a moratorium on the debts and my judgment is that it is a mistake for him not to make his going provisional upon France’s agreeing to pay. At any rate I think it is important that you and the President tell the French bluntly that we will not consider any debt settlement or concession so long as France is excluding our goods by quotas and so long as she discriminates against our trade through her Turnover Tax or any other such devices. Edge informs me that during the past six weeks France has raised many of her tariff rates, primarily for the purpose of later getting the credit of reducing them down merely to where they were a few weeks ago, and that we recently lost a sale of nearly ten million dollars worth of copper because [Page 496] through a special agreement between the two countries Belgium gets what is in effect a substantial rebate on the Turnover Tax.
The French are, I understand, bringing great pressure on the British to agree to a default on the June 15th payments in case we refuse to postpone payments, provided France now makes the December 15th payment. I am, therefore, more than ever convinced that the wisest thing to do would be for the President to get authority to put the British debt on the same basis as the French and to do so voluntarily. This would ultimately break up the united front and it would stop this flirting with the idea of a default. If we could announce that we were of our own accord putting the British debt on the same basis as the French, without prejudice to a later consideration of adjustments on this or other debts, it would throw the French into consternation and perhaps bring them to their senses. If I were the President I would do that even though I felt it advisable and possible also to get authority from Congress to make concessions as to payments on other debts accruing during the interim period of the Economic Conference.
It now looks as if the Four Power Pact will not materialize. Certainly it will not go through in its original form. If it goes through at all it will be considerably modified. The failure of this Pact, however, will make it all the more necessary to reach an agreement on disarmament but just how we are to do so unless they can find a way to settle or to bridge over certain of the political questions involving some revision of treaties is at present hard to tell.
The reactions here to your statements attacking economic nationalism are very good. You are going about it in the right way. I was interested in the statement which you gave out specifying the questions to be dealt with in the preliminary conversations in Washington. I have been a little fearful that we might get entangled in our own rope. I am, therefore, glad you are making it clear that there is no intention of having the Washington conversations take the place of the Economic Conference because otherwise, if the Conference should be a failure, the British might be tempted to blame us for messing it up.
I notice the press included disarmament in the list of questions to be discussed at Washington. I assume that there is no intention of any detailed disarmament discussions or negotiations because if there were I do not see how we could avoid crossing wires. I do hope, however, that you and the President impress upon all of them the necessity for genuine disarmament. At any rate, if disarmament is dealt with at all, I hope you can keep me advised of what is done so that I will not be put in the embarrassing position at Geneva of not knowing what to do.
Very sincerely yours,