800.51W89 Italy/209
Memorandum by the Secretary of State
The Italian Ambassador came in and broached the subjects of debts, saying that he came for information. He told me he had been instructed by Mr. Mussolini to bring up the subject in as friendly and delicate a way as possible; that he had looked through the records of the Embassy and found that some time in December the Embassy had sent us a copy of the Resolution of the Fascist Grand Council on this subject.12 I said I had received a similar copy through our Embassy, though I did not recollect the one that had come from his Embassy; that ours had come on December 6th. I told him I had been authorized by Mr. Roosevelt to invite the representatives of the six nations who had paid their December debt installments to send representatives to Washington one after another for the purpose of discussion. I said I was a little puzzled by the order in which to take them but I thought it would probably be best to take them in the order in which their requests had been presented to this Government, and for that reason I had invited the British first, as they had made the first request. I said it was a little difficult to tell exactly what time the Italians had made their request, but that if we took the notification which we had received in the Resolution of the Grand Council as such a request, Italy would still be behind Czechoslovakia and Latvia, and I mentioned that I did not yet know on what date Finland’s had been received.
The Ambassador was very agreeable to the suggestion and said there might possibly be some advantage in not being the first one. I told him that if he desired it I would take the cable of December 6th to which I had alluded, as such a request, and that I would now convey a formal invitation to come in the order mentioned and would send him an aide-mémoire of our talk and that invitation as soon as prepared. He said that was perfectly agreeable to him.
On the question of publicity, he agreed to leave that in my hands. I told him that I saw some advantages in having it all given out at once, rather than piecemeal.
- Dated December 5, 1932; not printed.↩