Paris Peace Conf. 860h.51/2
The Special Commissioner of Finance in Europe ( Crosby ) to the Secretary of State
My Dear Mr. Secretary: I have just received a telegram from Mr. Dodge, our diplomatic representative at Salonica. After giving some details in regard to advances made to the Serbians in the past, he writes as follows:
Minister of Finance leaving in a few days for Paris to confer with you and British and French Governments desiring considerably increased loans for Yugo-Slavia, stating receipts of Governments from taxes nothing and likely to continue so for a considerable time owing chiefly to administrative disorganization, destruction tax lists and certain amount of Bolshevism in Yugo Slav provinces while all salaries necessarily increased on account of high cost of living. Army cannot be demobilized owing to Italian situation.
I surmise that, in using the term “Yugo-Slavia,” Mr. Dodge intends to cover the whole of Serbia and the new territories liberated from the Austrian Empire. Evidently the Government there is going to ask for loans quite independent of relief in the way of food supplies, which you have lately been discussing with Mr. Hoover. The Secretary of the Treasury will doubtless desire recommendations on the subject, if he feels that, under existing statutes, aid can be given of the kind apparently in question.
I am wiring Washington the general situation disclosed by Dodge’s telegram. The matter being urgent, may I see you this afternoon at 5 o’clock?
Cordially yours,