-13-
 
 M. Champetier de Ribes, the Under Secretary of Foreign Relations, who said nothing of interest 
 
beyond expressing his gratification that the President had designated a special representative to 
 
the Vatican, and beyond emphasizing his own belief that this recognition by the President
 
of the United States of the moral force of the Church was of real practical value in the present 
 
world situation.
 
               I also spent a quarter of an hour in conversation with M. Alexis Leger, the 
 
Secretary General of the French Foreign Office. M. Leger, whose mind is typical of that
 
kind of French mentality which is logical, and mathematically precise, and very clear, but which 
 
makes no allowances for the imponderables of human nature such as human emotion, devoted 
 
himself to a discussion of French relations with Italy. To M. Leger the fault throughout had been 
 
the side of the Italians, and French policy had been correct from beginning to end. It was very 
 
clear that on this question he differed entirely from M. Daladier, and I gained the impression that 
 
the latter had complained of the results of the policy toward Italy which the French Foreign Office 
 
had been carrying on.  N. Leger also informed me that; the French Government had ready at 
 
Brest, waiting to sail, a number of French vessels sufficient to transport 50,000 French troops to 
 
Finland by way of Norway and Sweden, but that up to the present moment the French 
 
Government had been unable to persuade the Government of Finland to request officially the 
 
sending of this military assistance by France.  M. Leger told me that the Government of Sweden 
 
had informed the French Government, and also the Government of Finland, that