767.68119/406: Telegram
The Special Mission at Lausanne to the Secretary of State
[Received February 7—4:52 p.m.]
244. On February 4 Ambassador Child wrote to Curzon as follows:
We find that certain provisions in the economic and financial clauses of the draft treaty between the Allies and Turkey77 are ambiguous and might be interpreted in such a way as to work injustice to various national and private interests. We were not given an adequate opportunity to state our attitude on these provisions prior to their being drafted and incorporated in the proposed treaty. We are somewhat anxious concerning them.
It is our feeling, however, that it would ameliorate the difficulties if an additional clause were placed in the proposed treaty making a blanket provision that all conflicting claims between national or private interests to which the previously mentioned clauses purport to apply, should first be subject to arbitration, as a superior right, so that all may obtain full justice.
I am looking first to you rather than to others to give protection on this important point, and I will appreciate hearing from you that the subject which I have brought to your attention is not unwelcome.
- For text of draft treaty, see Great Britain, Cmd. 1814, Turkey No. 1 (1923), p. 683.↩