Office of the Historian

760j.67/39a: Telegram

President Wilson to the President of the Council of the League of Nations (Hymans)

Washington, November 30, 1920.

I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your cabled message,34 setting forth the resolution adopted by the Assembly of the League of Nations, requesting the Council of the League to arrive at an understanding with the governments with a view to entrusting a power with the task of taking necessary measures to stop the hostilities in Armenia.

You offer to the United States the opportunity of undertaking the humanitarian task of using its good offices to end the present tragedy, being enacted in Armenia, and you assure me that your proposal involves no repetition of the invitation to accept a mandate for Armenia.

While the invitation to accept a mandate for Armenia has been rejected by the Senate of the United States, this country has repeatedly declared its solicitude for the fate and welfare of the Armenian people, in a manner and to an extent that justifies you in saying that the fate of Armenia has always been of special interest to the American people.

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I am without authorization to offer or employ military forces of the United States in any project for the relief of Armenia, and any material contributions would require the authorization of the Congress which is not now in session and whose action I could not forecast. I am willing, however, upon assurances of the moral and diplomatic support of the principal powers, and in a spirit of sympathetic response to the request of the Council of the League of Nations, to use my good offices and to proffer my personal mediation through a representative whom I may designate, to end the hostilities now being waged against the Armenian people and to bring peace and accord to the contending parties, relying upon the Council of the League of Nations to suggest to me the avenues through which my proffer should be conveyed and the parties to whom it should be addressed.

Woodrow Wilson
  1. Not found in Department files; for the text, see League of Nations: Minutes of the Council, 11th Session, Geneva, November–December 1920, p. 84.↩