Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1927, Volume I

560.M2/37: Telegram

The Secretary of State to the Chief of the American Delegation (Wilson)

Washington, October 20, 1927—7 p.m.

6. Your 4, October 18, 10 p.m.

(1) Referring to Dutch suggestion Department feels that question of level of import tariffs is outside the agenda and that nothing could in any event be gained by bringing into discussion such a controversial question.

(2) Department concurs that under draft convention rights and obligations extend to contracting parties only, also that question of obligations of individual contracting parties under treaties of their own with particular states ought not to be discussed at this Conference. For your own information, however, it appears that a most-favored-nation provision in the form now being included in the treaties we are negotiating, if included in a treaty between this Government and a state party to the proposed convention, would oblige such state to extend to American commerce any favor that, under the convention, it extended to parties thereto, regardless of whether the United States were such a party. It should be observed, however, that Article VII of the treaty proposed by the United States to Austria and to other countries, calls for equitable rather than equal treatment in respect of rations or quotas.¹⁷

(3) Department approves your statement in discussion of Article 6 and awaits your further comment before commenting upon discussion of Article 9.

Kellogg

17. For previous correspondence as to the status of negotiations with Austria regarding the treaty, see Foreign Relations, 1925, vol. i, pp. 516–517. The text of the draft treaty as submitted to Austria in 1923, printed ibid., 1923, vol. i. p. 400, does not include the paragraph calling for equitable rather than equal treatment in respect of rations or quotas. For text of this paragraph in draft treaty submitted to France, see ibid., 1927, vol. ii, pp. 639, 642.