611.5131/1020
Memorandum by the Under Secretary of State (Phillips) of a Conversation With the French Ambassador (Laboulaye), November 23, 1934
The French Ambassador asked me this morning what was our reaction with respect to continuing negotiations for a trade agreement with France. I said that I could not as yet speak officially for the Department because we had not, so far as I knew, taken any definite action; I had had, however, occasions to sound out our experts and I believed that the general point of view seemed to be one of disappointment at the change of position of the French Government with respect to what they could offer to us and that, in the circumstances, we would probably not be justified in upsetting our program of negotiations with other countries in order to give preference to France. The Ambassador made no comment to this other than to suggest that in our reply we should endeavor to state precisely what we wanted to accomplish through a trade agreement. He asked me to realize that a new Government had come into power; a new Minister of Commerce was dealing with these problems, and that in his opinion it was important to keep the idea of a trade agreement alive rather than to let it die by an answer to the effect that we could not now negotiate. The Ambassador said he did not know the viewpoint of Flandin,39 which was the reason why, in his opinion, he felt it so desirable not to shut the door in the face of the new Government. I thanked the Ambassador for his suggestion and said that we would give it very careful consideration.
- Pierre Étienne Flandin, French Premier, November 8, 1934–May 31, 1935.↩