Following for Pearson from Robertson, Begins: Reference my telegram No. 524, 14th April, German settlement. Following specific considerations seem to me to support, with more or less force, the very general argument which I have tried to put forward against our raising the question of association of other belligerents with the German settlement at this time.

(I) The western occupying Powers need all the elbow room they can get to cope with the Russians who are still calling the tune in Germany and taking every opportunity to create mischief and difficulties. Pressures on London, Paris or Washington at the present time for closer association of other Powers in the general direction of German policy could only hamper them from acting together as quickly and flexibly as the changing situation demands.

(2) The United Kingdom and France, with the encouragement of the United States, are laying the foundation of a new organization of Europe through western union, which would completely cut across the old lines of 1939-45 belligerency and neutrality. Such plans for European recovery and reconstruction are directly and immensely dependent upon the future of Germany. To my mind it would be a major mistake to exclude Italy, for example, from participation in the German settlement so long as she is co-operating in the European Recovery Program and participating in plans for a western European customs union, etc., which imply the ultimate integration of German resources in the European economy. Europe has undergone profound changes since the defeat of Germany, and it is no longer possible to think of it in terms of "western belligerents" versus the rest. The division of Europe today - and there is no reason to believe that the Russians will permit its coming together in the foreseeable future - has created an entirely new alignment of forces, and any suggestion of a conference of "western belligerents" to determine the future of Germany, for example, would cut across this alignment.

(3) Were we to insist on the necessity of closer formal association in the German settlement, it would be difficult to distinguish effectively between our approach and Evatt's recent effort to revive plans for a general German Peace Conference which would settle all the issues on which the Council of Foreign Ministers were unable to agree. I do not think a general conference could accomplish anything of the sort, and I should not like to see our interest in helping to further a sound European settlement confused with his search for a new conference over which he could perhaps preside.

(4) An invitation either to "other western belligerents" or to "western European countries" to a conference to determine the future of Western Germany would formally and definitively mark the abandonment of any hope of ever getting a four-Power agreement in Europe. It is true that very little hope of such agreement remains, but it would still be a serious step formally to exclude its possibility. Relations with the Soviet Union during the next year or two seem certain to remain delicate and difficult, and I do not think we should urge the Western Great Powers to take a diplomatic initiative of this kind which might precipitate a possibly avoidable crisis in those relations.

(5) As events develop over the next months we must expect to see democratic German administrations gradually assuming increasing responsibility for the conduct of affairs in Western Germany. The Western Powers which need German resources to make the European Recovery Program work are bound, for economic and strategic reasons, to encourage such German administration to co-operate as closely as possible in plans for European reconstruction. This task would be made more difficult by premature pressure for a formal peace settlement which could only confirm the partition of Germany under Allied auspices. Ends.