845.515/546
The British Ambassador (Halifax) to the Acting Secretary of State
My Dear Ed: When I raised with you this afternoon the question of Indian silver, you asked me after our talk to let you have a brief note on the subject. This I gladly do.
I have just had a telegram from the Secretary of State for India in which he expresses his great anxiety at the position taken up on this matter by the United States Administration.
The Government of India, as you know, has learnt with much gratitude of the willingness of the United States Government to help in this matter of silver, but the Secretary of State for India is much perturbed that along with this readiness to help should have gone the request that His Majesty’s Government should accept with the Government of India a joint obligation to the United States Government. He assumes that this attitude is partly the result of His Majesty’s Government having sponsored the Indian case, but also arises from a feeling in the mind of the United States Government that an undertaking for replacement from the Government of India alone is in the present constitutional situation, and in view of possible future developments, inadequate.
He has asked me to represent to you as strongly as I may the fact that for over twenty years India has been recognised by all countries as fully competent to enter into separate International obligations and has done so freely. Moreover the United States Government themselves have hitherto treated India on this basis in respect of mutual aid and reciprocal aid including coinage silver supplied last autumn, though admittedly it was stated at the time this was not to be regarded as a precedent. He greatly regrets that the State Department should have now felt it necessary to adopt so rigid an attitude, and he would wish on behalf of His Majesty’s Government to make it quite clear that [Page 262] he cannot accept the implication that India is in any respect wanting in competence to conclude such a deal, or that the prospect of future Governments honouring obligations of their predecessors can properly be questioned.
He feels too that you have perhaps given insufficient weight to possible, or even probable, repercussions upon Indian susceptibilities of such open distrust of India’s future as your present attitude would appear to imply, and accordingly hopes that for this and other reasons, including that of the future relations subsisting between India and the United States, you may be prepared to reconsider this attitude.
May I add just this from my own judgment, on the basis of my past knowledge and experience of India? I do think that the Indian Political leaders who perhaps before long are likely to find themselves in a position of responsibility, are bound to resent the suggestion that they are unworthy of confidence in this matter. Nor can I imagine that, purely on the basis of Indian self interest, any such fear of Indian failure to honour their obligations is likely to be well-founded. If it so turns out that an Indian Popular Government is established in the not too distant future, the last thing in the world that I should imagine they would wish to do would be to quarrel with the United States. Every consideration would lead them to follow a different line! I do therefore venture to associate my own personal argument with those of the Secretary of State for India in the hope that it may be possible for your Administration to reconsider their present position on this subject.
In any case, and however this discussion may go, I am asked finally to put this further request of urgency before you. The Government of India are pressing for deliveries of silver to commence and attach very great importance to the time factor. His Majesty’s Government would accordingly ask that if a discussion of the main issue, as I have tried to set it out above, is likely to take more than two or three days, you would be willing to allow immediate shipment of say ten million ounces, without prejudice to the larger question.
Yours sincerely,