Office of the Historian

800.515/569a: Telegram

The Secretary of State to the Charge in the United Kingdom (Matthews)

Washington, March 23, 1943—midnight.

1770. For Casaday from White,22 Treasury. Sir Frederick Phillips has indicated in a letter to me that our Stabilization Fund proposal [Page 1063] was going to be discussed along with the British Clearing Union plan at a meeting of the Finance Ministers of the Allied Governments in London probably on March 26. Below is a reply which I sent to Phillips. My letter to him represents the views of our State Department also. With the approval of the Acting Ambassador, will you please hand a copy of my letter to Phillips to the appropriate official in the British Treasury as quickly as feasible. I am advising Phillips of this action.

“This is in reply to your letter of March 20, 1943, regarding discussion of the Stabilization Fund proposal in London. We appreciate your courtesy in wishing to have copies of the preliminary draft of our Stabilization Fund proposal made available to the Allied Finance Ministers for discussion at a meeting in London.

“However, in transmitting the preliminary draft of the Stabilization Fund proposal to the various Ministers of Finance for their exploratory study, Secretary Morgenthau indicated that after they had had an opportunity to examine the draft, he would like to have them send their technical experts to Washington to discuss the matter further with him and our Government experts here. He realized that the proposal as distributed required further explanation and amplification to be fully understood and he preferred that at least the initial explanatory discussions should be directly with us.

“In view of the foregoing, we suggest that any discussions of the Stabilization Fund proposal by the Allied Finance Ministers in London should be postponed until after we have had an opportunity to carry on explanatory discussions here in Washington. Needless to say, we will avoid consideration of the Clearing Union in our discussions until you have had an ample opportunity to conduct your explanatory discussions.”

[White]
Hull
  1. Harry Dexter White, Assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury, and Director of Monetary Research.↩