840.50 Recovery/7–1548
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Secretary of State
| Participants: | M. A. Raymond-Laurent, M.R.P., Vice Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, French National Assembly; |
| The Secretary | |
| T. C. Achilles—WE. |
M. Raymond-Laurent called with a letter of introduction from M. Bidault. In a general discussion he stated that the French people realized that ERP must mean recovery rather than relief and that in order to achieve it, they must work harder, make substantial sacrifices and cooperate with other countries to an unprecendented extent. He believed that both the economic and political situations in France had greatly improved in the last six months, that the Schuman Government would survive the rest of this year, and that, if it did, de Gaulle’s chances of coming to power at any time would have been greatly lessened.
I observed that since coming to the State Department I had been faced, with respect to products for civilian consumption, by the same problem I had had at the War Department with respect to military supplies, namely allocation of a limited amount of material between a large number of claimants. The Chinese had never forgiven me for my part in the decision to fight the war in Europe first and now blamed me for pushing recovery in Europe first. In Latin America most of the leaders have come into power since 1939 and did not realize the extent to which their countries had depended on Europe as a source of supply before the war. I said I was endeavoring to convince both the Latin Americans and the Chinese that European recovery was essential to their own well-being, whereas sums spent on them would be ineffective in the absence of European recovery. I expressed the hope that the French and other Western European Governments could give us a hand in convincing the Latin Americans in particular of the truth of this position.