611.4131/1725
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Under Secretary of State (Welles)
The British Ambassador called at my request this afternoon. He said that it gave him a great deal of pleasure to tell me that he had last night received a telegram from his Government stating that the British Cabinet had passed upon the American trade agreement requests at its last meeting on Wednesday48 and that the decisions reached by the British Cabinet made him feel very satisfied since they conceded practically everything that the British delegation here had had any hope of obtaining. He said he felt very much “elated”, and I inquired whether he thought we would feel equally “elated”. The Ambassador said that that of course was a different matter and that he was afraid not. I asked him whether the decision reached by the British Cabinet included the concession for Douglas fir lumber from the United States as requested by this Government. He said that it did not. I remarked that I was sorry to hear that since, as he undoubtedly knew from his conversations with the Secretary of State, [Page 49] this Government attributed fundamental importance to that item. The Ambassador said that it was a question of principle with his Government and that they felt that specialization in tariff schedules to such an extent as to distinguish between Douglas fir and fir from the Baltic Republics would vitiate the principle of the most-favored-nation treatment and result in a glaring injustice to the Baltic countries with which Great Britain is on the most friendly terms. I said that, as the Ambassador knew, I was not familiar with the negotiations on the trade agreement, nor was I familiar with the technical aspects of these questions, but that it seemed to me very clear that if this Government in the course of negotiations had adopted the attitude of the British Government, it would have been quite impossible for this Government to offer any concessions to Great Britain for its textiles and other manufactures regarded by the British as of great importance and that the result would then have been that many of the concessions of real importance offered to the British would have resulted in competition for British products, which would have destroyed the value of the concessions made. The Ambassador said that he realized this fully after his talk with the Secretary of State a few days ago but that it was a question of how far one could legitimately specialize and repeated that with his Government it was a question of principle.
- July 27.↩