767.68119T&M/13: Telegram
The Special Mission at Lausanne to the Secretary of State
[Received 4:02 p.m.]
64. At the tenth meeting of Lord Curzon’s first commission on territorial and military questions today Child made the following statement during the debate on the Straits:
“I have listened with interest to the points of view of the various delegations on the subject of the Straits and trust that a statement of the views of the American representative will not be unwelcome.
Our position is based upon that policy of our Government which stands for complete and constant freedom without special privilege for our commerce and for the commerce of other nations.
The application of this policy to the question of the Straits is not difficult. We desire for the good of our own interests as well as for the good of all, including those peoples and nations which border on the Black Sea, that nothing shall be done which will take from any of them, Bulgaria or Ukraine or Turkey, Roumania or Georgia, the guarantee that they shall be accessible to the commerce of the world. Accessibility to that commerce is their right. It is equally the right of the commerce of the world to reach the peoples of this region.
I do not understand that any delegation here would openly deny that right for times of peace. This is not sufficient. It is in keeping with the progress of world administration and enlightened international purposes that the commerce of neutral nations shall not be interrupted during a state of war.
The freedom of the Straits is a term too limited to cover the field of this discussion. This discussion involves freedom of all those nations which border on the Black Sea and of all those nations outside the Straits who desire to reach them on their friendly errands.
We cannot accept the position stated by anyone who has spoken for the position of the nations on the Black Sea; we have heard no one speak with the assent of all. We cannot accept the position that the future of [commerce] in the Black Sea is the exclusive affair of the states bordering upon it. We assert that it is the concern of all the nations of the earth. It is untenable that any one nation by the virtue of geographical position should hold the power of depriving every other nation of these rights. This would be not only against [Page 914] the interests of our national policy; it would be against the interest of every nation on the Black Sea; it would be against the whole historical development of the freedom of the Black Sea. The unlimited control of the Straits and the Black Sea by any one nation is against the policy of the world.
I do not understand that any nation here will deny these fundamental principles of the freedom of the Black Sea. I do not understand that Turkey denies them. I do not even understand that any nation having an eye for extension of territory or seeking to control the policy of Turkey will be heard here to deny them. I assume that these fundamental principles will be established by this conference. No other result would satisfy the views of my Government. Without presuming to speak specifically for others I assume that no other result would satisfy either the nations inside or outside the Straits.
It is our view that the freedom of the Black Sea is to be gained only by disarmament. More than this it is our belief that even armament designed to keep the Straits open is in fact a danger to the freedom of the Black Sea.
If any nation or group of nations representing the interests of all nations accepts the trusteeship of the freedom of the Black Sea, this trusteeship may be carried out we believe with greater guarantee of good faith and constancy if reliance is placed upon agreements rather than upon force. It is possible for me to overlook the proposal made by one delegation here that by such agreements all warships should be excluded from the Black Sea. I would find it equally reasonable to exclude warships from every international body of water. No nation has gone further than the United States in policies of naval disarmament but no nation would be more ready to uphold the good sense of maintaining sufficient naval force to assure as police [policing?] of the free seas, to protect its citizens and their ships wherever they might be, to suppress piracy and other menaces and to act at times for the public good and to give relief to suffering just as ships of war have recently acted in the Near East. Ships of war are not necessarily agents of destruction; on the contrary they may be agents of preservation and serve good and peaceful ends in the prevention of disorder and the maintenance of peace. We I believe in common with every commercial nation wish access to every free body of water in the world and we will not be satisfied if our ships of war may not pursue their peaceful errands wherever our citizens and our ships may go.[”]