800.51W89 France/901: Telegram
The Chargé in France ( Marriner ) to the Secretary of State
[Received May 27—9 a.m.]
241. During a debate in the Chamber of Deputies yesterday on the French Government’s policy at the forthcoming Economic Conference Deputy Laurent, Radical Left, protested against the omission of the war debt question from the agenda of this Conference and insisted that the popular sentiment of France was that as Germany had ceased to pay reparations, France is not called upon to pay the United States. Further, that as America had intervened to liberate Germany debtor of France it had by this act also discharged France in the same measure.
Herriot challenged such an interpretation of the Hoover moratorium.88 He further explained that President Roosevelt had told him that the condition of any later arrangement whatever was that France should first of all pay the December 15 annuity and that as far as the President was concerned such a payment would be accepted as a setoff against a final settlement.89
[Page 873]Deputy Franklin Bouillon, the fiery leader of the Nationalists, insisted that President Roosevelt’s good will in the matter would receive no support from Congress and invited the attention of the Chamber to the effect that the President had decided not to ask full powers to settle the debt question.
An examination of the official report of the discussion leaves the impression that the sentiment of the Chamber has not changed since December last when it voted against payment of the war debt.
- See Foreign Relations, 1931, vol. i, pp. 1 ff.↩
- See memorandum by the Under Secretary of State of a conversation between President Roosevelt and M. Herriot, April 27, p. 497.↩