462.00 R 294/242: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in France (Herrick)28
284. Your despatch 3178 June 4.29
You may inform the French Foreign Office as follows:
“I did not fail to transmit to my Government the note which Your Excellency addressed to me under date of May 24, 1923 concerning the assent of Your Excellency’s Government to the suppression of paragraph 2 which it had been proposed to include in Article 6 of the agreement for the reimbursement of the cost of the American army of occupation in the Rhineland.
“My Government has noted the statement contained in Your Excellency’s note that (here quote second paragraph of the Foreign Office’s note).
“In reply I am directed and have the honor to inform Your Excellency that my Government does not understand by this statement that it is intended to deny to the United States the enjoyment of the rights and advantages to which the United States is justly and equally entitled as a participant in the common victory, including the rights and advantages stipulated for its benefit in the Treaty of Versailles and accorded to the United States by the treaty signed on August 25, 1921 between the United States and Germany. It may be observed that this would in no way derogate from any of the benefits which the other Allied and Associated Powers are also justly and equally entitled to enjoy. My Government is confident that it is no more the purpose of the other Allied and Associated Powers to attempt to discriminate against it with respect to these privileges and benefits, which would not have been secured except through the success of the common effort, than it is the purpose of the Government of the United States to seek to exercise its rights under the treaties above mentioned in any spirit other than that of equity towards its associates in the war.”