500.A21/124: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Argentina (Armour)
42. Your 68, March 6, 3 p.m.84 Please take occasion to express to Cantilo85 the appreciation of this Government for his prompt reply to our suggestion.
You may add that we recognize that no ultimate tangible results can be achieved without the cooperation of the Governments at present belligerent, but that we feel that a common purpose coordinated among the neutrals may well have a beneficial influence on the character of economic reconstruction after the war and on the attitude in this respect on the part of the belligerents in considering terms of peace. On the other hand, if the neutrals are incoherent and passive and fail to formulate any policy or desiderata, not only will their direct interests be likely to be disregarded at the time of peace negotiations, but the entire process of post-war reconstruction may again, as it did after the last war, assume a character prejudicial and dangerous to economic progress everywhere.
- Not printed; it transmitted a memorandum from the Argentine Foreign Office which said that Argentina would give its full cooperation to the project but was of the opinion that no useful and efficient work could be accomplished as long as participation of the great countries at war could not be counted on.↩
- José María Cantilo, Argentine Minister for Foreign Affairs.↩