500.A15 a 1/414a: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Chairman of the American Delegation (Gibson)
42. The press in this country has several times reported from English sources statements similar to that which appeared Sunday, July 10, in New York Times, as follows:59 [Page 97]
“According to the reports received here (i. e. London) the official American experts at Geneva have been strongly reinforced by unofficial representatives of great concerns whose probable interests lie in the direction of contracts for steel plants and other indispensable concomitants of a big navy. Much of the pugnacious spirit in which reports to the American press from Geneva have been conceived is attributed here to the activities of these unofficial propagandists.”
Does statement that representatives of steel plants or manufacturing concerns are in Geneva or are interfering in any way with deliberations contain any truth?
The New York Times also has an editorial based on British information that the United States, Great Britain, and Japan would have been saved $750,000,000 through British extension of age limit alone, and that reduction on the size of cruisers would have been a great saving. The first statement is, of course, absurd, and second is wholly inaccurate unless total tonnage is reduced; cost of building small cruisers is more proportionately than to build large ones, and they cost more to maintain. These points should be borne in mind in event of statements at plenary session or at any other time, in your judgment, when press statements are given out.
- Quoted passage not paraphrased.↩