871.4016 Jews/82: Telegram
The Ambassador in France ( Bullitt ) to the Secretary of State
[Received 4:46 p.m.]
170. I discussed with Delbos a number of matters:
1. Rumania. Delbos said that both he and Eden12 had reminded Micescu13 in Geneva that the treaty guaranteeing the rights of minorities in Rumania was the same treaty which had given Rumania both Transylvania and Bessarabia,14 and had stated that if the Rumanian Government should destroy the integrity of this treaty by attacking the Jewish minority in Rumania, the French and British Governments would regard the entire treaty, including the portions which give Transylvania and Bessarabia to her, annulled by the action of the Rumanian Government itself.
Delbos added that he had sent a telegram to Eden at 11 o’clock last night containing proposed instructions to the French Minister in [Page 6] Rumania directing him to call on King Carol and on Goga and to repeat as emphatically as possible the statements that he and Eden had made to Micescu. He had requested Eden to instruct the British Minister in Rumania to make an exactly similar démarche. He had not yet received Eden’s reply but was confident the Bulgarian Government would act with the French Government in this matter.
He asked me if there might be a possibility that the United States would wish to associate itself with such an action. I replied that in spite of the fact that our Government had great sympathy with persecuted minorities everywhere we were not parties to the treaty guaranteeing the rights of minorities in Rumania and I considered it out of the question for our Government to take any such action.
Delbos said that he had been unable to obtain any definite promises from Micescu but that he had left Geneva with the definite impression that Goga would go slow in his attacks on the Jews.
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3. I had been informed by Delbos’ most intimate assistant that he had had a highly acrimonious discussion with Litvinov15 in Geneva as a result of his suggestion that his policy of rapprochement with Germany might establish an atmosphere of peace in Europe which would be to the ultimate advantage of the Soviet Union as well as France and Germany.
Delbos said that this was indeed true. Litvinov had displayed the greatest hostility to the idea of a rapprochement between France and Germany; and the French Communists, on orders from Moscow, would certainly oppose such a rapprochement.
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- For portions of this telegram not printed here, see p. 155.↩
- Anthony Eden, British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.↩
- Ivan Micescu, Rumanian representative at the 100th session of the League of Nations Council, January 25–February 2, 1938.↩
- Treaty between the United States, British Empire, France, Italy, Japan, and Rumania, signed December 9, 1919; League of Nations Treaty Series, vol. v, p. 335.↩
- Maxim M. Litvinov, Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs, and Soviet representative on the League of Nations Council.↩