ABSTRACT

In the State Department’s ‘Review of Diplomatic Relations’ written for the incoming administration in late February 1933, the Division of Western European Affairs declared unequivocally that ‘American relations with Great Britain had been particularly satisfactory during the past four years’. Minor matters had been settled promptly, while over major issues like disarmament, the Far East and war debts the two governments had maintained ‘the closest collaboration’.1 This verdict probably aroused some scepticism in the Roosevelt camp where they were just as confused, uncertain and suspicious of British intentions as London was of the new President’s objectives. The group established by Moley and Tugwell to consider the forthcoming negotiations thus met with Bullitt late in February and concluded, ‘We cannot understand the British attitude except on the assumption that to them the debts are everything and the rest of the program of recovery nothing’. The malevolent Bullitt even suggested that the British were seeking to drive America off the gold standard to establish sterling as the world’s monetary unit. A more widely held view was that they were simply ‘stalling’ to prevent anything being settled by 15 June in order to open the way to default and a refusal to cooperate with the rest of the American programme for world recovery. To forestall this possibility, the incoming Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, met Lindsay in late February to warn that ‘plenary negotiators’ would be welcome to discuss debts and other economic matters but ‘if they insist on clean cancellation, nothing can be done’.2