842.24/170

Memorandum of Conversation, by the Assistant Secretary of State (Berle)

The Canadian Counselor34 came in to see me today at his request, on another matter.

I took advantage of his presence to bring him up-to-date on a couple of matters.

I said that we knew the Canadian Government had felt left out because it had no Lease-Lend agreement and therefore had nothing corresponding to Article VII of our Lend-Lease agreements. We had, therefore, addressed a note to the Canadian Government,35 embodying the text of Article VII, so that the door should be wide open to the Canadian Government if it wished to join in these discussions.

[Page 194]

The Counselor said that this had been under discussion; that Mike Pearson36 had gone to Ottawa and would be back in a few days; that he was engaged in discussing exactly this.

I then said that we had likewise been considering possible methods of implementing Article VII and that the British had inquired when we would be prepared to hold consultations under it. I said that working up an agenda for an Article VII consultation was no small task; that we had thought of a number of things. Among the things being tentatively considered was the possibility of international exchange stabilization with an appropriate institution for that purpose. I was of the impression that this tentative possibility had been mentioned to the British and I wished to mention it to him. I wished to emphasize, among other things, that as it lay in our minds, discussions to that end would have to include not only the British but the Canadians as well, and probably a number of other countries.

A. A. B[erle], Jr.
  1. Merchant Mahoney, Counselor of Legation.
  2. Not found in Department files. For exchange of notes between the United States and Canada regarding postwar economic settlements, signed November 30, 1942, see Executive Agreement Series No. 287, or 56 Stat. (pt. 2) 1815.
  3. Canadian Minister Counselor at Washington.