765.84/4525½
Memorandum by the Secretary of State
After Mr. Allende Posse,84 who accompanied the Argentine Ambassador85 on a call to my office today, had paid his respects and left, at my request the Ambassador remained behind for a few words on another subject.
I then proceeded to refer to the Italian occupation of Ethiopia by military force and expressed the opinion that the interpretation and application of the Argentine Peace Pact86 to this Italo-Ethiopian situation would come up for decision possibly within three or four days hence. In the most unofficial and individual manner, I suggested that it would be exceedingly important if the Ambassador could, in the same informal way, sound out his Government as to what it had in mind with respect to the interpretation and application of the Argentine Peace Pact to the forcible invasion and seizure of Ethiopia by Italy.
The Ambassador said that the Italian situation in his country, to which this question would call attention, would be most serious; that there were one million native-born Italians in Argentina and they were a great factor in that country. I reminded him that of course we had a similar situation in this country, but said that great peace champions like our two nations and our two governments, who are accustomed to proclaim the sanctity of treaties and to denounce violaters of treaties, are in no situation to turn and walk away from [Page 226] the plain letter, as well as the spirit and policy, of the peace obligation to which they are signatories without saying or doing anything; and that it is correspondingly important that the Argentine Government—the author of this peace pact, its sponsor and its depository—may undoubtedly have something special or definite in mind as to how to deal with the forthcoming Italo-Ethiopian situation as applied from the standpoint of a signatory of the Argentine Peace Pact.
The Ambassador again expressed himself as feeling that the matter would be quite difficult. He finally stated, however, that he would immediately think over all its phases and see what he could do in this respect and advise me later.
- An Argentine highway-building engineer.↩
- Felipe A. Espil.↩
- The Anti-War Treaty on Nonaggression and Conciliation, signed at Rio de Janeiro, October 10, 1933, Foreign Relations, 1933, vol. iv, p. 234.↩