500.A15A4/1124: Telegram
The Acting Chairman of the American Delegation (Gibson) to the Secretary of State
[Received June 14—3:45 p.m.]
244. MacDonald and Simon lunched with me today. Davis and Wilson were present.
MacDonald said that the atmosphere in Paris was excellent; that Herriot was as friendly as could be, and that until their conference here in Geneva this morning, where they got down to specific questions on disarmament, he had been very hopeful but that he was rather discouraged by his inability this morning to elicit anything more than the same generalities he had heard before. MacDonald therefore thinks that we have got to go back again over the same ground with the new French and German Governments that you and he covered with Bruening and Tardieu in the hope of arriving at the same starting point. He was struck by Herriot’s statement that he could not discuss with Germany questions arising out of the Treaty of Versailles as that would imply recognition of Germany as an equal. MacDonald stated that they had tried to [get?] the French to examine with them certain specific possibilities but that Herriot and in particular Paul-Boncour had insisted on dragging in such matters as the international force, internationalization of aviation and other controversial questions as necessarily preceding any discussion as to suppression or limitation of arms. MacDonald said that he was willing to join a group which would not include Germany to discuss the problem of specific qualitative limitation as he thought we would be justified in leaving Germany out of the discussion in matters where she was already limited by treaty and could so explain to her. When it came to questions of a more general nature, however, he was not willing to debate them without the presence of the delegates as he felt that would not only be wrong but would be playing directly into the hands of those Germans who were opposed to agreement since they would be justified in saying that agreement had been reached behind Germany’s back and without consultation with her.
No mention was made of any comprehensive British plan for disarmament and of course we did not broach it. It is our impression [Page 170] from the tone of their conversation that they had submitted specific proposals to the French and that these had met with such a discouraging response that they did not consider it worth going any further with us for the moment.
After the general conversation MacDonald called Davis aside and said that he wanted some time to talk very privately with him about Lausanne;39 that the situation had changed radically since his talk with you and subsequently with us in London; that the City is now more insistent than ever on a complete wiping out of reparations and that he was in an embarrassing position and was afraid you might feel that he had let you down. The stand which our Government had taken, he said, is quite understandable, had rather increased the pressure from the City. It may be that if the British are pressing the French for total cancellation of reparations the latter may be holding back on disarmament for the moment which in turn might readily account for MacDonald’s failure to elaborate his [statement?] to us. We hope to check up on this from the French this afternoon.
We discussed various possible courses of procedure but felt that no decision could be taken as to the wisest course until after conversations which are still to take place with Grandi and Nadolny this afternoon.
Simon felt that it was very important that we agree upon some definite basis of work for next week in Geneva. He suggested that there should be a definite objective in the talks with the French and Germans and envisaged the possibility of trying to persuade both of them to accept in the new treaty the inclusion of the military clauses of the Treaty of Versailles as applying to Germany, leaving Germany free at the termination of the treaty to negotiate a further treaty as an equal, but preventing her by some provision from denouncing the treaty during its life and thus freeing herself in this manner from the restrictions of the Versailles Treaty. He further proposed that Germany might give some sort of undertaking that during the life of the treaty she would conduct her foreign affairs in such manner as to avoid bringing up controversial political questions. We replied that we would be glad to collaborate with them in examining the possibility of reducing to writing for the clarification of our minds the first points indicated but we felt it would be unwise for us to try to deal with the question of a “political truce” particularly before his conversations had proven that such a thing would be possible.