500.A15a3/1222: Telegram
The Ambassador in Italy (Garrett) to the Secretary of State
[Received 8:05 p.m.]
102. From Gibson. The American press correspondents here, having been advised from Washington that I was in Rome, asked to be received today. They arrived in a body after lunch, and several of them produced messages from their offices in Washington to the effect that I had been sent to Rome on special mission as the personal representative of the President and had been given a free hand to bring about a naval understanding between Italy and France. In some of the messages the terms good offices and mediation were used.
Through their representatives these messages from the American press were so wholly inaccurate that I was able to deny them, confining what I said to the statement that both in Paris and here I had discussed particularly important questions on the agenda of the Preparatory Commission in the hope that we might be able to speed matters so as to make this meeting the last.
This statement is entirely accurate, as, both in Paris and here, I have gone over the agenda in considerable detail, and in such conversations [Page 165] as I have had in both capitals I have made it clear to the respective Governments that I was not on any special mission, that I did not have any mandate to offer mediation or good offices, and that my role was limited to repeating substance of your conversations with the French and the Italian Ambassadors at Washington.