500.A15A4 General Committee/795
Memorandum by the Chief of the Division of Western European Affairs (Moffat)
The Italian Ambassador called this morning and left a copy of the full text of the recent Mussolini disarmament proposals.
Mr. Norman Davis and I received him together and discussed the general disarmament outlook with him. Mr. Davis made it quite plain that the Italian proposals were nothing more or less than a negation of the idea of disarmament and that if persisted in would result in a treaty which could be signed only by European States. He doubted whether any extra-European State would be interested in merely maintaining a status quo on the part of the armed Powers and providing for German re-armament. He said that we had been studying both the British and Italian proposals and had reached the conclusion that we should give the British proposals our blessing. Obviously they did not go as far as we would wish but they are actuated by a desire to meet the complexities of the present situation and yet to retain a large measure of disarmament. As a matter of fact we had given an aide-mémoire the previous evening to Sir Ronald Lindsay and Mr. Davis then gave Ambassador Rosso a copy for his information. Mr. Rosso said that obviously the Italian proposals had only been made on the assumption that disarmament could not in practice be achieved. Mr. Davis suggested that if Great Britain, the United States and Italy stood firm, it would go a long way toward increasing the chances of a successful resumption of the disarmament discussions. Mr. Rosso said that of course Italy’s interest was to have some measure of disarmament and would presumably support the British proposal but that failing such a measure it would prefer to see Germany’s re-armament contractually provided for rather than resulting from a unilateral decision. Mr. Davis indicated that perhaps the Italian Government would prefer to see either a large measure of disarmament or none at all, but Mr. Rosso begged the question and referred to the text of the Mussolini proposal.
The talk then veered to Austria. The Ambassador felt that Italy had made her attitude very clear, not only in public statements but in the way she had allowed the news of the concentration of her forces on the Austrian frontier to emanate from Rome. He said that the [Page 26] unknown quantity in the whole situation was Great Britain and that if Germany were ever convinced that England meant to back up British dicta, she would undoubtedly govern her policy accordingly.