600.0031 World Program/153½
Joint Statement by President Roosevelt and the Belgian Prune Minister (Van Zeeland)
The President and the Prime Minister have had the opportunity of reviewing the operation of the trade agreement between their two countries17 and of the arrangements for cooperation and stability in the monetary sphere in which the two governments are now joined with others.
The results are a matter of great satisfaction. They are a clear demonstration that countries can develop an enlarged and mutually beneficial trade between each other, serving to give employment and to improve the standard of living in both countries, without disturbing in any significant way the organization of their production. It is an example of what can be done where fear, hostility, and aggressive intention are absent.
Such arrangements have served and will continue to serve both as steering machinery for the monetary systems not only of the six countries that have become parties to the arrangement but to much of the rest of the world.
Beyond relations between Belgium and the United States they reviewed the questions of economic difficulties and the continuing armament race that are now creating so much anxiety in the hearts of peoples everywhere. Out of the conversations it was stressed that within the frame of traditional American policy it was the disposition of the United States to cooperate in the joint work of rebuilding international trade, continuing cooperation in monetary matters, and seeking arrangements whereby the burdens and dangers of overwhelming armaments might be reduced or the method of their employment safeguarded.
[Page 683]Among the principles envisaged in the program adopted by the American Republics at Buenos Aires18 there were specially emphasized:
The importance of peoples being educated for peace, and led by their Governments toward peace.
The development and faithful observation of peace agreements.
The pursuit of commercial policies that create peaceful trading interests between nations.
- For correspondence concerning a Supplementary Trade Agreement Between the United States and Belgium, see vol. ii, pp. 219 ff.↩
- See Foreign Relations, 1936, vol. v, pp. 3 ff.↩