893.51/7395a
The Adviser on Political Relations (Hornbeck) to the Under Secretary of the Treasury (Bell)
Dear Mr. Bell: Mr. Coe, speaking, I understood, under instructions from the Secretary of the Treasury, informed me yesterday afternoon of latest developments in the matter of the proposed new financial assistance to China.
Without undertaking in this context to express an opinion regarding the merits of the plan which I understand was decided upon by the Secretary of the Treasury and the President yesterday, and laid before Dr. T. V. Soong, I wish to go on record as asking, on my own responsibility and in light of the fact that the Treasury has drawn [Page 442] me into the discussion of the matter, whether the procedure envisaged in this plan, whatever may be the other objectives which it might serve or effects which it might have, can be expected to serve substantially either the political or the economic objectives which apparently have been in Chiang Kai-shek’s and H. H. Kung’s minds in connection with the appeals which they have made for a loan and in the minds of Mr. Gauss and Mr. Fox in connection with the comments and suggestions which they have offered in relation to the question of a loan, and which have been in the minds of officers of the Department of State who have studied those appeals, comments and suggestions and the situation out of which they arise.
I am sending you here enclosed, for strictly confidential use, a digest of telegrams which have borne on this subject.53
Yours sincerely,
- Digest not printed; telegrams printed separately.↩