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APPENDIX I.
NOTE BY THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN
AFFAIRS.
TREATY FOR THE RENUNCIATION OF WAR.
157
I have now received (very confidentially under cover
of a letter from M. Fromageot to Sir Ceoil Hurst) the actual
terms in which the French Government propose to reply to the
United States.
In Sir Cecil Hurat's report on the meeting of Jurists
it was stated "it is, however, important that the under-
standings on which each government accepts the proposed peace pact should be set out in its reply in order that they may
be known to all the governments concerned". In the draft
approved by the Cabinet we have discharged this task literally
and have devoted three paragraphs to explaining why we consider that there is no inconsistency between the American proposal
and Article 16 of the Covenant. On the other hand the German
reply treats the point so obscurely that, as I pointed out to the
Cabinet, no one, and least of all Mr. Kellogg, is likely to
perceive that it is there.
The French reply is not quite so disingenuous, but it
skates very lightly over the thin ice. It deals with the point
in two short sentences.
The first sentence (in § 3) stated
that "it results" from the new preamble that "the signatory Power which may henceforth seek, by a personal recourse to war, to promote its own national interests, will find itself deprived of the benefits of the treaty". This wording is taken from the
text of the preamble with the exception of the words which I
have underlined. The second sentence occurs later where the draft note states that none of the provisions of the new treaty
(1)
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