711.5112 France/66

Memorandum by the Chief of the Division of Western European Affairs (Marriner)

The text of Mr. Briand’s proposals for a Treaty to outlaw war, contained in telegram No. 260, of June 22, 1927, from the Embassy at Paris, a copy of which is attached,9a should be carefully considered from every point of view.

Mr. Briand’s insistence that negotiations should begin at once without awaiting the arrival in this country of M. Claudel would seem to indicate that he was most anxious to keep this topic in the public eye most prominently during the meeting of the Naval Conference at Geneva10 in order to draw attention away from the fact that France is not there represented in a constructive step towards World Peace.

The vague wording and lack of precision in the draft seems also intended to give the effect of a kind of perpetual alliance between the United States and France, which would certainly serve to disturb the other great European Powers,—England, Germany and Italy. This would be particularly true as it would make the neutral position of the United States during any European war in which France might be engaged extremely difficult, since France might deem it necessary to infringe upon our rights as a neutral under this guaranty of non-aggression. A further point which Mr. Briand has not touched on is the question of France’s obligations under the Covenant of the League of Nations to aid the League in the punishment of an aggressor state. It might likewise be used internally in France to postpone the ratification of the Debt Settlement and to create a feeling that payment was unnecessary.

In order to avoid this interpretation, it would be incumbent on the United States at once to offer a treaty in the same terms to England and Japan, more especially as we are negotiating with them at the present moment and could hardly wish them to feel that we were entering into an alliance at the same time with another Power.

Certainly a single treaty of this nature, and, according to press despatches, France desires that it be an absolutely unique instrument, would raise the question of an alliance with a country outside the American hemisphere. A series of such agreements, unless it were absolutely world wide, would raise the same objections. All this tends to indicate that it would be best to keep the subject in abeyance [Page 618] at least until the conclusion of some agreement in Geneva. However, when the time comes actually to negotiate, it would seem that the only answer to the French proposition would be that, as far as our relations with France were concerned, adequate guarantees were contained in the Bryan Treaty,11 and that if any step further than this were required, it should be in the form of a universal undertaking not to resort to war, to which the United States would at any time be most happy to become a party. Before such a time, treaties of the nature which France suggests become practically negative military alliances.

J. T. Marriner
  1. Ante, p. 615.
  2. See vol. i, pp. 1 ff.
  3. Treaty of Sept. 15, 1914, Foreign Relations, 1915, p. 380.