500.A15 a 1/555
Memorandum by the Secretary of State
The Japanese Ambassador called on me today and wished to know if I had any news from Geneva of which I wished to inform him. I told him that we were very much pleased with the attitude of the Japanese Delegation and congratulated them on their work there. That there had been no trouble to agree with Japan but that we could not agree to such an enlarged building program as the British government wanted. That the lowest proposition they made would permit them to build at least 426,000 tons of cruisers and even more if they did not build up to what they wished in submarines and destroyers. They said they wanted 90,000 tons of submarines and 221,000 tons of destroyers. This would leave 426,000 tons for cruisers and even more if they should not build up in the other two classes. We could not agree to any such program. We thought the maximum proposed by us of 300,000 tons was adequate. We could not understand that there was any danger to British commerce or foreign possessions, since the only navies in the world amounting to anything were the Japanese, the British and the United States. That if they had accepted 300,000 tons and allowed us to build the same number of 10,000 ton cruisers and 9,800 ton cruisers as Great Britain had, with the cruisers we had already there would only be 60,000 tons to [Page 157] build and there probably would not have been any trouble to agree on what size they should be. He said his government was very anxious not to have a big building program and wanted to know if we would have a big one. I told him I had no expectation of it, but of course I could not tell. He said he had seen in the papers that the President was going to call another conference. I told him I had seen the President’s press statement this morning which stated that he had no expectation of calling another conference before 1929, and as he would go out of office in March, 1929, there seemed to be little possibility of it, but said I did not wish to make any statement that would bar him if he should wish to do so. I told the Ambassador that I had no intimation from the President that he wished to do so. I asked him if the Japanese Delegation was coming back this way and he said that he hoped they would but he was not sure. This was about the substance of what he said.