740.5/10–2550
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Secretary of State
| Participants: | Mr. Henri Bonnet, French Ambassador |
| The Secretary | |
| Mr. George W. Perkins, Assistant Secretary, EUR |
Ambassador Bonnet stated that Mr. Schuman had asked him to bring in the text of the statement which Mr. Pleven made yesterday in the French Assembly.1 He also handed me a translation which he said had been prepared in his Embassy and which was not, therefore, the official translation.
He said that he had been asked to point out that the situation had been a difficult one for France and that they had made an earnest effort to solve it. They believed the proposal which they were making was a real contribution to bringing Europe closer together, that it was not [Page 404] a tactic to delay progress on the rearmament of Germany and that, on the contrary, it provided a means by which German units could be brought into the picture in larger numbers and at greater speed than any other proposal. I pointed out to Ambassador Bonnet that I thought it was important that their position should not be a rigid one and, if the French insisted that all the suggestions they had raised must be fulfilled before progress could be made, we were in a hopeless situation. I added that it was important that we make progress. Ambassador Bonnet asked if this meant that I thought we should proceed in Germany before agreement upon an over-all scheme. I replied: that I thought it was important that we make progress in Germany and that we should find ways and means of doing that as soon as possible. We then discussed some of the aspects of the Plan without arriving at any specific conclusions.
- This statement by the Prime Minister on the creation of a European Army, referred to in later documentation as the Pleven Plan, is summarized and discussed in telegram 2248 to Paris, October 27, p. 410. For text, see Royal Institute of International Affairs, Documents on International Affairs, 1949–1950, pp. 339–344.↩