500.A15A4 General Committee/860
Memorandum by the Under Secretary of State (Phillips)
The French Ambassador handed me this afternoon the accompanying résumé78 of the French reply to the British Government on disarmament; it was, in fact, communicated by the French Ambassador in London to the Foreign Office at 3:30 this afternoon and may possibly be made public towards the end of this week. The Ambassador admitted that it was not a move in the direction of disarmament, but he saw no other alternative for any French Government at the present time; Mr. de Laboulaye talked at some length regarding the European situation; he welcomed, on the whole, Mussolini’s move towards a rapprochement with Austria and Hungary because it indicated a definite decision on the part of Italy to stand up against German absorption of Austria; it was somewhat amusing, he observed, to see Italy playing closer together with her former archenemies, Austria and Hungary, which for many years it had been her policy to weaken, but that, now she was faced with the possibility of German penetration south as far as Trieste, Italy had no alternative but to pull together once more with her immediate neighbors; this, he thought, was a good sign and that it would make for stability and he believed it would be welcomed in France.
- Not found in Department files; for English text of note, see Great Britain, Cmd. 4559, p. 11.↩