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fundamental issue, since security involved real and actual dis-
 
armament of the kind which would make it possible fer men and
 
women to go back to constructive work, with a consequent increase
 
in living standards, and with a consequent immediate opportunity
 
for all of those economic readjustments which are indispensable 
 
to a durable peace.
 
     The President further requested me to say that he was
 
confident that neither the Governments of Great Britain nor of
 
France possessed as an objective the desire to destroy Germany nor
 
the German people, and that he believed that their chief desire 
 
was to assure themselves that not again would a situation arise 
 
where a major European war was forced upon them in every 
 
succeeding generation.
 
     I dined informally with Count Ciano and I had the
 
opportunity of talking privately with him immediately after
 
dinner. I communicated to him the President's instructions to me.
 
     Somewhat to my surprise Count Ciano expressed emphatic
 
approval of the decision reached by the President, and said that 
 
he believed that it was far better that at this stage no 
 
impression be created that the Government of the United States
 
had any apparent participation in the formulation of any terms 
 
of political adjustment which might be considered by Hitler. He 
 
said that he fully agreed also that the problem of security
 
was the key problem, and that while he believed like Mussolini 
 
that no security could be achieved unless an agreement in 
 
principle were reached upon a "just political peace" he, never-
 
theless, strongly felt that the two problems could and should be
 
treated simultaneously. He repeated his own belief that a
 
four-power pact between German, Italy, France and Great Britain
 
might prove the basis of a plan for real security,
 
with the agreement that if any one of the four powers undertook an act of
 
aggression, the other three powers would immediately join
 
                                                   together