800.51W89 France/827: Telegram

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

33. Your 19, January 23, 8 p.m. In order to obtain the best possible information on the effect which the conversations on the debt question with England and other nations would have on France I called this afternoon on the Prime Minister in accordance with his suggestion at our last conversation that we exchange views on this subject whenever any new fact arose.

Boncour seemed very much preoccupied with his parliamentary and budgetary difficulties although he said that nothing was nearer to his desire than to find some solution for this equally pressing question of the debts.

In reply to a direct question as to what effect these conversations would have on France he said that they gave rise to the hope that something would come out of them which would permit a new approach to the problem and at the same time to the fear that as other nations than England were also being invited to the conversations it might appear that France was being discriminated against on account of the deferred payment. I asked him if he did not feel that the very fact that the nations which had paid their installment in accordance with their debt agreements were being invited to Washington to confer on the debts and related subjects, monetary and economic, was not to a considerable extent the fulfillment of the resolution of the French Chamber of Deputies at the time of the refusal of payment, namely, an assurance to the nations paying their installments that they would have the opportunity of discussing their debts and even enlarging that discussion to related monetary and economic questions.

Boncour studiously refused to answer this question which I put at two or three different times in slightly different forms coming back every time to his statement that the suggestion of any discrimination between those nations which had paid their installments and those which had not would badly affect public opinion in France and make it impossible to change parliamentary opinion at present. The only reason he gave for this feeling was that in permitting certain nations facilities for discussing their debts they were refusing France the same facility which she desired very much to discuss the debts and related subjects merely because the payment of a very small amount involved in the whole discussion had been deferred and which action would leave France isolated. I suggested it was hardly a case of the United States isolating France but rather of France isolating herself. He made no additional comment on this observation.

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The whole tenor of his conversation and his frequent insistence on the undesirability of excluding France from these conversations because of its failure to pay the December 15th installment was on exactly the same lines which I had yesterday afternoon with Monique, the French Financial Attaché in Washington, who has been seeing many of the French Government officials here for the last few days and the only conclusion to be drawn from it is that the present attitude of mind seems to be that France is becoming even more sensitive on the subject and ever more stubborn.

Edge