September 29, 1944
MEMORANDUM FOR
 
 
                   THE SECRETARY OF STATE                   
 
 
 
            I do not think that in the present stage any good purpose
would be served by having the State Department or any other department
sound out the British and Russian views on the treatment of German
industry.  Most certainly it should not be taken up with the European
Advisory Commission which, in a case like this, is on a tertiary and
not even a secondary level.
 
 
            The real nub of the situation is to keep Britain from going
into complete bankruptcy at the end of the war.
 
 
     Somebody has been talking not only out of turn to the papers or on
facts which are not fundamentally true.
 
 
            No one wants to make Germany a wholly agricultural nation
again, and yet somebody down the line has handed this out to the press.
I wish we could catch and chastise him.
 
 
            You know that before the war Germany was not only building
up war manufacture, but was also building up enough of a foreign trade
to finance re-arming sufficiently and still maintain enough
international credit to keep out of international bankruptcy.
 
 
            I just can not go along with the idea of seeing the British
empire collapse financially, and Germany at the same time bullding up a
potential re-armament machine to make another war possible in twenty
years. Mere inspection of plants will not prevent that.