Office of the Historian

800.51W89 France/1049

The Ambassador in France (Straus) to President Roosevelt 34

Paris, May 23, 1936.

Dear Mr. President: In the Paris New York Herald of Thursday, May 21st, there is an intimation (whether correct and authoritative, of course I do not know), that the Secretary of the Treasury had in mind a series of conferences looking toward the stabilization of currencies and a suggestion that war debt settlement will form part of such discussions. This appears to have been made apropos of the agreement with the Chinese Government.35

In the press of other matters you may have forgotten the method of possible adjustment of war debts I made to you almost two years ago, and the memorandum36 I then at your request drew up for you. At that time you accorded me permission informally and unofficially to discuss the thought with French officials. This I have frequently done, always distinctly impressing on whomsoever I presented it to that it was my own personal solution of a puzzling and irritating cause of American dissatisfaction with French postwar policy. Various responsible elements in France, it would appear, are beginning to realize that France has needlessly incurred American displeasure and that some tender, which must, as I have so often repeated to my official contacts, emanate from the debtor, will have to be made, and Léon Blum, in his American Club speech a week ago yesterday, gave the first semi-official recognition of the desirability of seeking a better Franco-American relationship. Something may come of it, particularly if Herriot takes the Foreign Ministry. Hence this letter.

With kindest regards [etc.]

Jesse Isidor Straus

P. S. I am enclosing a memorandum of a possible plan for payment.37

  1. Referred by the President to the Secretary of the Treasury for preparation of a reply, and informally transmitted by Mr. Morgenthau to the Secretary of State for suggestions regarding a letter to the Ambassador over the President’s signature.↩
  2. May 18, 1936; see Treasury Department, Annual Report of the Secretary of the Treasury on the State of the Finances for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1938 (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1939), p. 267.↩
  3. Despatch No. 1183, September 4, 1934, from the Ambassador in France; not printed. For outline of Ambassador’s suggestion, see Foreign Relations, 1934, vol. i, p. 558.↩
  4. Not printed.↩