761.62/832: Telegram
The Minister in Rumania (Gunther) to the Secretary of State
[Received December 14—6 a.m.]
812. My 785, December 5, 6 p.m.59 last paragraph. Yesterday evening Benton saw Cretzianu, the Secretary General of the Foreign Office, who reiterated60 that the situation in connection with the Danubian Conference had improved from the Rumanian standpoint, the Germans being firmer and the Russians less intransigent. He said that the Russians had now agreed to accept the German point of view of a commission including Italy as well as the riparian states but at the same time they insisted on a subcommission composed only of Russia and Rumania to deal with technical questions in connection with the lower Danube. Germany, he explained, was prepared to accept this point of view and the difficulty now lay in deciding just what powers such a subcommission should have. Germany apparently desires the subcommission to be a technical one pure and simple, whereas Russia is endeavoring to invest it with so much power that the real Danubian commission would have little or no say in the lower Danubian region.
[Page 537]Cretzianu added that the various delegates would be leaving for home for the Christmas holidays very soon and that a definite solution of the problem would therefore probably have to wait until after the New Year.
I am reporting in detail on developments in the Danubian Conference inasmuch as I strongly believe that they serve as an excellent barometer indicative of the fluctuations in Russo-German relations.
Copies by airmail to Berlin, Rome, Sofia, Belgrade, Budapest and Moscow (via Berlin pouch).
- Not printed.↩
- In telegram No. 785, the Minister had reported a conversation in which Cretzianu had made this same statement to him. He further stated that Cretzianu admitted in response to his suggestion that as this change of attitude had occurred subsequent to Molotov’s visit in Berlin it was quite possibly a sequence thereto. (761.62/824)↩