462.00R294/702
Memorandum by the Assistant Secretary of State (Castle)
I asked the representatives from the four embassies80 to come to my office because I wanted to discuss with them the question of the arrangement being made between this Government and the German Government. Naturally I sent for them at separate times, since obviously they could not be approached in exactly the same way. In general, however, I gave them all an outline of what we were discussing with Germany, the reason why it was necessary to have a separate agreement and the reasons for the slight variations between our projected agreement and the provisions of the Young Plan. All four expressed themselves as grateful for the information. All four said that, so far as they were personally concerned, it did not seem to them possible that their Government could object to the separate agreement in itself or to any of the details of that agreement as I had explained them. I pointed out very clearly that, if there should be any desire to upset our agreement because we did not put in it a “security clause” for possible future revision of figures, that we might well be compelled to stand on our rights and insist that our payments be made unconditional, as had been first suggested. This would, as they well knew, pretty well destroy the Young Plan.
- Belgian, British, French, and Italian.↩