500.C111/887a: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Consul at Geneva (Gilbert)
100. The Secretary requests that you deliver the following message at once to the Chairman of the Second Committee of the League of Nations Assembly:
“I have observed with the greatest of interest that many important governments of the world, as represented in the Committee of which you are Chairman, have reached close accord on an economic program [Page 523] designed to assure a fuller and more satisfactory restoration of industry and commerce. These far-reaching conclusions of your Committee possess great weight since the Committee comprises members of the actual governments in office in most of the important trading countries of the world, selected because of their special competence and assigned to the task of considering economic questions.
“The world will note that a leading conclusion of your Committee is that the adoption of more liberal international trading policies is ‘indispensable’ to further recovery. It will be understood that the definite recommendations made by your Committee take into account the difficulties which face many governments in lessening the existing impediments to the exchange of goods and that your Committee proposes a method by which commercial policies can here and now be directed along liberal lines despite these difficulties. To this end your Committee has recommended the conclusion of bilateral trade agreements pointing out that the beneficial effects of such agreements will be the more widespread when based upon the principle of the most-favored-nation clause. The circumstance that following upon the great economic disturbances of the recent past the nations, speaking through the specially qualified governmental representatives that make up your Committee, show such a consensus of judgment is most dramatic and encouraging.
“The proposed program assumes, no doubt, that each country will continue to develop its economy on domestic lines as fully as sound business calculations may justify, but recognizes fully the economic fact, which has been demonstrated by bitter experience, that full and stable business prosperity, full employment of labor at satisfactory wages, and the need of a secure foundation for peace, would all require the restoration of a normal volume of international trade.
“I have absolute faith that patience and political courage on the part of all, acting simultaneously as is contemplated in the resolutions, will make realities of the recommended action.”