Office of the Historian

740.5/9–2454: Telegram

The Ambassador in France (Dillon) to the Department of State 1

secret
Paris, September 24, 1954—8 p.m.

1269. Views contained in Depcirtel 1562 conveyed to Parodi and Margerie. They found them in main encouraging but expressed serious concern over point three. Parodi felt that unless US could give substantially similar assurances there was no point in trying to reach any agreement on Germany. He hoped most important words were “much will depend on outcome”. We took occasion to reiterate difference as far as US was concerned between a Europe effectively integrated for defense and a Europe of discordant nationalisms, [Page 1260] as well as seriousness of reappraisal currently taking place in Washington.

Parodi asked our reaction to Murphy’s talks with him and Mendes yesterday. We mentioned feeling that Mendes seemed uninterested in effective, positive measures of mutual control through NATO and overly preoccupied with developing negative, almost Versailles type, controls through Brussels treaty. They felt it inconsistent that US should so strongly support EDC and now question performance of some of its functions through Brussels treaty. We replied that in simplest terms difference was between positive and negative approach. They denied that current French thinking was negative in this respect and stressed importance of giving Brussels really substantive functions rather than mere window-dressing ones.

In subsequent conversation Margerie commented that Mendes’ position at London would be very different from his position at Brussels. This time he was going with position approved by Cabinet but which was reasonably flexible, with Parliament in recess rather than breathing down his neck and with program in which he really believed and which he believed could be sold to Assembly. Margerie himself had serious reservations on last point and said that, while he was optimistic that mutually satisfactory agreement could be reached at London, he feared that any agreement would be rejected by Assembly for reasons having little relation to its substance.

Dillon
  1. Repeated to London, Bonn, Rome, Brussels, The Hague, and Luxembourg.↩
  2. Dated Sept. 23, p. 1245.↩