800.515/864
Memorandum by the Assistant Secretary of State (Berle)62
At Secretary Morgenthau’s invitation I went over to the luncheon he was giving for Lord Keynes and Lionel Robbins, who are here with the British economic group. There were only five present: Secretary Morgenthau, Mr. White, Lord Keynes, Mr. Robbins and myself.
Secretary Morgenthau asked what the British idea of a schedule on the monetary conversations was. Lord Keynes said that they expected to be discussing monetary stabilization with the Treasury group; that if an approximate meeting of minds was had on the expert level they would then hope to appoint an international drafting committee, composed of representatives of the treasuries of say five or six [Page 1084] countries; that this drafting committee would prepare a project which might be submitted to the various governments in advance of the conference; and that the next stage would then presumably be the Treasury conference.
Secretary Morgenthau said this seemed agreeable to him, and he then inquired of me whether the State Department thought it was all right.
I said that we considered that the Treasury was principally interested in the matter; I personally saw no objection.
If we have any objection to this procedure, we ought to make it at once to Secretary Morgenthau. The scheme of course follows the general outline of the plan the Treasury had indicated some time ago.
[The currency stabilization discussions with the British Treasury delegation were held at the Treasury in September and October 1943. Minutes of the first two meetings were not kept. Minutes of the other meetings, the third on September 23 to the eleventh on October 9, are not printed. The discussions led to agreement on two documents: (1) A draft directive for a drafting committee, and (2) a set of agreed minutes. These two documents are printed below.]
- Addressed to the Secretary of State and to Mr. Pasvolsky.↩