500.A15A4 General Committee/878: Telegram
The Ambassador in France (Straus) to the Secretary of State
[Received 3:50 p.m.]
308. Conversations the last 2 days between members of the Embassy staff and officials of the French Government including Barthou, Jean Paul-Boncour, Comert10 and others confirm that the French note of April 17th on disarmament marks a fundamental change in the French policy. Barthou stressed that the note was to be taken not as a gesture but as a final decision. Paul-Boncour explained that the French Government now had laid its cards squarely on the table in the belief that the stiff barriers used in the note was perhaps under the present circumstance the “best language to use towards Germany today”. Comert whose sympathies are inclined to be on the left declared that after the German reply11 to the British demand for removing increased military estimates no other course was possible.
According to a most reliable account Barthou up to the very eve of the Cabinet meeting on Tuesday held his ground for a reply and along the lines of a limitation convention backed by adequate guarantees and involving a certain measure of German rearmament. Late Monday night he was informed that Doumergue had decided to support Tardieu, [Page 53] Herriot and Petain in a demand for complete break in the negotiations and a rejection of the British plan as the basis for agreement on the grounds that the Government could not stand on any other basis. Early Tuesday morning he drafted an alternative note in consultation with Doumergue which he produced in Cabinet after his original draft had been rejected and which formed the basis of the note actually sent.
In the French view the next step will be a full dress meeting of the General Commission in Geneva where the whole question of German rearmament will be aired. The French would like the General Commission to register the fact that in view of Germany’s disregard of the conditions of the peace treaty and its headlong race for armaments no disarmament is any longer possible, instead the nations must seek means to protect themselves through security agreements and a chain of mutual guarantees. There seems to be some doubt in the French mind as to just when the Bureau and the General Commission of the Conference should meet. The view appears to be gaining ground that the date of the Bureau should be adjourned from April 30 to about May 5 and the date of the General Commission advanced to approximately the same time. Evidently the Bureau which was to draft a new basis of convention now will have no role to play but to summon the General Commission. The latter will serve primarily as a platform from which to arraign the Reich.
The Government’s action clearly has the full support of parliamentary, press and public opinion. The only notable exceptions are on the young radical and socialist left. Jacques Kay ser who from time to time during the Conference was connected with the French disarmsment delegation states in today’s La République that the abandonment by the Doumergue government as a result of reactionary pressure of the traditional diplomatic line renders a security agreement with Germany more remote than ever and paves the way for an armaments race. He says in substance that France was confronted with the two halves of an alternative, either to negotiate a treaty providing for limited disarmament, limited security and a limited and controlled rearmament of Germany or to make formal proposals to England for common action to punish Germany for its defiance of the peace treaty. France has thrown down the convention without proposing common action. This is ridiculous and not diplomacy, Kayser concludes. With this single exception, however, and a protest from the socialists the press is unanimous in commending the Government and approving the text and tenor of its note.
Mailed Rome, Geneva, Berlin, London, Brussels.