500.A15A4/2448
The Ambassador in Belgium (Morris) to the Secretary of State
[Received March 22.]
Sir: I have the honor to refer to my telegram No. 12 of March 7, 5 p.m.,71 and to enclose copies71 of the minutes of the Sessions of the Belgian Senate on March 6, 7, and 8, in which will be found a general discussion of Belgian foreign policy. On pages 221 and 222 of the minutes for March 6, 1934 will be found the text of the address of the Prime Minister relating to the Belgian attitude toward German rearmament. A translation71 of the essential parts of the speech is also enclosed for the Department’s convenience. The occasion for this address was the opening of the discussion on the 1934 budget of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Senate.
In general, the Prime Minister’s thesis was that German re-armament cannot be stopped by the only two means existing: (1) a strict application of Article 213 of the Versailles Treaty, and (2), a preventative war; because no one country or group of countries will sanction either of these procedures. Therefore it is highly important to conclude immediately a general convention entailing a minimum of sacrifice in return for a maximum of guarantees.
In this connection, and further to my telegram mentioned above, I made an appointment with Monsieur Paul Hymans, Belgian Foreign Minister, on March 9, in which I asked him to explain to me the reasons [Page 29] for and the import of the Prime Minister’s speech in order that I might report them accurately to my Government. Monsieur Hymans told me that the Prime Minister wanted to arouse the Belgian people to a full realization of actualities and to stop them from living in a fool’s paradise. (In this connection I refer to the following statement contained in Monsieur de Broqueville’s declaration:
“I, as well as you, try to see the bitterness of the situation. It is the consequence of a great illusion—that of the men who, by the Treaty of Versailles, scorned the lesson of history and reality in believing that it was possible to maintain indefinitely a great nation in a state of disarmament. What Napoleon, all-powerful master of two-thirds of Europe, could not impose on the small state of Prussia,—how can one imagine that 27 nations, at one time ‘Allied and Associated’, can continue to expect to impose on a Germany which the Treaty of Versailles has unified?”
This clear and unequivocal statement was generally interpreted as indicating a drastic change in Belgium’s outlook on the question of German re-armament). My interpretation of Monsieur Hymans’ statement was that the Prime Minister wanted to clarify the present disarmament situation and to show the complete lack of any existing means to control re-armament in Germany. It was for the purpose of awakening public opinion here that the Comte de Broqueville spoke so bluntly and strikingly of the situation which all thinking people realize, but which those less informed—looking through the tangled mass that is the disarmament situation of the present time—failed to grasp with all its sinister implication.
The Foreign Minister said that the speech should not be interpreted as showing any alteration in the foreign policy pursued by Belgium during the past three months. During his visit to Paris at the end of December (reported in my despatch No. 102 of January 8, 193472), Monsieur Hymans stated that he had outlined Belgian policy to the Sarraut Cabinet. He indicated that the British and French Governments were kept informed of Belgian official opinion and he intimated that the present situation as outlined by the Prime Minister was known in substance by these Governments before it was made public.
I asked Monsieur Hymans if King Albert had known of the speech before he died,73 as such a statement had appeared in the press and come otherwise to my attention. He replied that the deceased King had never seen the speech since it had been drafted only three or four days ago, but that the thoughts expressed had previously received his approval and been voiced by him many times during the last two months.
[Page 30]I referred to the fact that the French Government was considering the tenor of its reply to British disarmament proposals left by Mr. Eden on his recent return trip through Paris, and asked Monsieur Hymans if the Cabinet had seen a copy of the French draft of this note. He said they had not seen the copy since the note was still under preparation. I did not feel I could press him further on this point, even though he did not tell me that he was ignorant of the tenor of the French counter-proposals.
The Foreign Minister said that his speech of Wednesday had followed closely upon the declaration of the Prime Minister, was complementary to it, and that the two speeches should be read together as one; that he endorsed everything the Prime Minister had said, and that his (Monsieur Hymans’) later short speech on Thursday was made in order to soft-pedal, as I understood it, for internal political reasons.
As of added interest to the Department, I report that the Foreign Minister put a hypothetical question to me which he said he hardly expected me to answer from a juridical point of view but he hoped I would from a moral point of view. He asked me what the position of my Government would be if a war broke out and the United States, as a signatory to the Kellogg-Briand Pact, was faced with the question of trading with belligerents. Would the United States declare its neutrality and cling to the inherent right of a neutral to trade in non-contraband with a belligerent? He stated that this question of the freedom of the seas worried the British Government at this time. I replied that I felt sure that he would not be disappointed at my not giving him any reply to his question.
As I left, he reiterated that Belgian foreign policy of the past three months was not altered in the slightest by the declarations of the last few days.
In this connection I believe that the Department will find it of interest to re-read my despatch No. 87 of December 4, 1933,75 reporting on the declarations of Monsieur Hymans before the Chamber of Deputies on November 29, 1933, at the time when the budget for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was being discussed by that body. The words spoken by Monsieur Hymans on November 29, 1933, contained most of the implications contained in the Prime Minister’s speech of March 6, 1934. The Prime Minister’s speech is, however, much clearer and blunter than Monsieur Hymans’ speech of November 29, 1933, and directly criticizes the methods provided by the Treaty of Versailles for keeping Germany in a state of disarmament.
[Page 31]There can be little doubt that the Prime Minister’s speech served its purpose of awakening Belgian public opinion to the disarmament situation as it actually exists today. The first reaction was one of shocked alarm. But after Monsieur Hymans’ speech of the next day, in which he outlined in detail post-War disarmament proceedings and the present situation, and his soft-pedaling on Thursday, March 8, a calmer discussion of the attitude and the points involved is being adopted by papers and persons of all opinions.
The Comte de Broqueville’s argument that Germany cannot be stopped from re-arming unless resort is had to a preventative war, appears to be unassailable. It is equally apparent that unless some agreement is reached concerning the limitation of armaments, a new race for armaments is inevitable. These facts have begun to be realized in Europe. Assuredly it was bold to suggest that Article 213 of the Treaty of Versailles76 was no longer efficacious because England and Italy would no longer resort to the procedure therein provided. It would seem that the Prime Minister must have been assured of his ground before making public this attitude of the British and Italian Governments and failing to ascribe the same attitude to the French Government.
But the declaration, beyond voicing a sincere hope that an armaments convention would be agreed to, was void of any constructive suggestions toward this end. While there are persons who assert that the declaration was a tactical and diplomatic blunder in view of the present delicate state of negotiations in Europe, there are others—in general, better informed—who believe that it was well timed to awaken people with responsibilities to govern, that the negotiations must not fail if a universal race for armaments or war is to be avoided.
The British Ambassador, Sir George Clerk, informed me today that Great Britain had no advance knowledge of Monsieur de Broqueville’s speech (I do not feel entirely convinced on this point), and that he did not believe that either France or Italy had any advance knowledge either. He declared that the de Broqueville speech supported the statement of British policy relating to armaments, made on January 29, 1934. Sir George thought that the Prime Minister made his speech largely for internal consumption in order to awaken the Belgian public to the real situation and to that extent the speech served a useful purpose. He believed, however, that it was a rather dangerous utterance so far as repercussions abroad were concerned.
[Page 32]The French Ambassador, Monsieur Claudel, informed me that his Government had had no advance knowledge of the Prime Minister’s speech. He added that he considered the declarations unwise and that it was displeasing to the French, whose position re German rearmament was unquestionably weakened.
It is too soon to evaluate the effect the Prime Minister’s statements will have on the political line-up in Parliament. Party groups in both Houses of Parliament have been convoked to discuss their attitude toward this declared foreign policy of the Cabinet. One of the groups will probably succeed in forcing a bill demanding a vote of confidence on the floor of the House. It is probable that the Liberal-Catholic majority of 28 over Socialist opposition will be lessened if forced to concede confidence in the Government before it can see clearly the whole armaments situation.
Respectfully yours,
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- Albert I had died on February 17, 1934, the result of a mountaineering accident.↩
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- This article reads as follows: “So long as the present Treaty remains in force, Germany undertakes to give every facility for any investigation which the Council of the League of Nations, acting if need be by a majority vote, may consider necessary.” (Treaties, Conventions, etc., 1910–1923, vol. iii, p. 3415.)↩