Office of the Historian

800.51W89 France/819a: Telegram

The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in France (Edge)78

Washington, January 23, 1933—8 p.m.

19. For your information and guidance through the tangle of inaccurate newspaper stories, the Department wishes to give you the main outline of the events of the past few days.

The President-elect and the President met in recognition of the need of the promptest possible action to remedy existing conditions. They agreed that the Department should, in the name of the incoming administration, invite the British Government to begin discussions, as soon after March 4 as might be practicable, of the debt question and of various monetary and economic matters that would enter into the coming world Conference. The result was made known in a joint Roosevelt-Hoover communiqué79 which you have no doubt seen.

That afternoon the Secretary called in Sir Ronald Lindsay and informed him of this action. At the end of the conversation he gave the Ambassador an aide-mémoire80 of the conversation which contained the invitation to the British to send representatives to enter into two sets of connected discussions, one dealing with debts, the other with monetary and economic questions already touched upon. The next step is therefore up to the British. The conduct of the meetings which will take place after March 4 will be in the hands of the new administration.

This morning the Italian Ambassador saw the Secretary and the Secretary, in agreement with Governor Roosevelt, informed him that promptly after the termination of the discussions with the British, this Government will be ready to enter into discussions of a similar scope with the Italian Government.81 Similar statements will be made to each of the governments that have met their December 15 payments when and as they may raise the question with the Department.

No new move has been made in regard to those governments which did not meet their December 15 payment.

The Department would be interested to have from you by cable your judgment as to the effect which our discussions with the British have had in France and how they may affect French action as regards the debt.

Stimson
  1. The same, except for final paragraph, on the same date to the Ambassador in Germany as telegram No. 9; to the Ambassador in Great Britain as No. 19; to the Ambassador in Italy as No. 5.↩
  2. See press release issued by the White House, January 20, 1933, p. 827.↩
  3. Ante, p. 828.↩
  4. See memorandum by the Secretary of State dated January 23, p. 888.↩