550.S1/1069
The Minister in Rumania (Wilson) to the Acting Secretary of State
[Received June 29.]
Sir: I have the honor to report that representatives of the five agrarian countries of central and eastern Europe, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Rumania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, composing the so-called “Agrarian Bloc,” met in Bucharest from June 4 to June 6, 1933. Representatives of Greece, Turkey, Estonia and Latvia were present as observers.
The purpose of this meeting was to consider the situation of the agricultural countries with regard to the World Economic Conference at London and to decide upon a common attitude at the Conference. The basis of discussion was a memorandum drawn up by Rumanian and Polish experts stating the point of view of the agricultural states with regard to the agenda prepared for the London Conference by the Committee of Experts. A copy of this memorandum was forwarded to the Department with a despatch of May 24, 193349 from the Consulate in Geneva.
The delegates to the Bucharest meeting were greeted in the name of the Rumanian Government by Mr. Mironescu, Vice-Premier and Minister of the Interior, who made a perfunctory address of welcome. Mr. Virgil Madgearu, Rumanian Minister of Finance, was unanimously elected president of the meeting and made a rather long speech in the usual positive and uncompromising Madgearu manner. He reviewed the efforts of the agrarian states to protect their interests at the Agricultural Conference at Bucharest and Sinania, at Warsaw [Page 635] in 1930, before the Committee of Study for European Union at Geneva, at the Wheat Conference in Rome in 1931, and at Stresa in 1932. He deplored the lack of practical results from these various meetings and laid the blame on the agricultural protectionism practiced by the industrial countries of Western Europe and on the lack of cooperation by the over-seas, grain-producing countries. Mr. Madgearu reviewed Rumania’s financial situation since 1929 as an example of how the world depression has affected the agricultural countries. He attributed the present bad situation to the closing of foreign markets, low prices and the failure of foreign capital to continue to seek markets in the agricultural countries. He said nothing about the effects of industrial protectionism on the part of the agricultural states, or of import and exchange restrictions applied by them beyond stating that these latter restrictions were made necessary for self-protection. Nor did he mention the undeniable fact that unsound fiscal policies have largely contributed to the financial ills of the agrarian countries.
The general tone of Mr. Madgearu’s speech was that the agricultural countries have been imposed upon and that something must be done to help them. He recommended that any suggestion to reduce production be categorically refused and that “means be found” to sell the exportable surplus of the grain-producing countries at high prices. How this desirable state of affairs is to be realized is not specified, but it is obvious that it is to be at the expense of somebody else. Mr. Madgearu seems to think that because the several states represented grow grain that they are entitled to privileged treatment.
The meeting adopted a resolution containing fifteen principal points setting forth the common attitude of the countries of the Agrarian Bloc at the London Conference. The resolution demands the abolition of inter-governmental debts, the rearrangement or maintenance of monetary stabilization, the restoration of freedom of exchange operations, the abolition of prohibition and restriction in international trade and the extension of preferential tariffs. The Agrarian States consider the time opportune for the realization of the projects for public works under the League of Nations. They do not consider that they should curtail production, in view of the fact that none of them has increased the areas under cultivation. Finally they demand that importing countries should import a fair share of the products of agrarian states and renounce the idea of artificial self-sufficiency from the agrarian point of view, which last, they consider, has largely contributed to the world crisis.
There is transmitted herewith a copy in French of a pamphlet50 containing the speeches, minutes of the sessions and the resolutions adopted.
[Page 636]A copy of the despatch, together with a copy of the pamphlet, is being sent to the Embassy in London with the request that it be forwarded to the American Delegation to the London Conference.
Respectfully yours,