701.8411/6
Memorandum by the Chief of the Division of Near Eastern Affairs (Shaw)
Memorandum of Conversation With the Secretary at Which Were Present Dr. C. Martin,17 Lieut. Masfan,18 Mr. Harrison Osborne19 and Mr. Shaw
By way of explaining his mission, Dr. Martin handed to the Secretary a translation of the letter from the Prince Regent of Ethiopia to the President,16 as well as a copy of the remarks which Dr. [Page 600] Martin proposes to make if and when the President receives him.20 The Secretary read these documents and said that he would ask the President to receive Dr. Martin.
Dr. Martin took up the matter of our sending a diplomatic representative to Addis Ababa and was informed by the Secretary that we intended in the very near future to send a good Foreign Service Officer to act as Minister Resident and Consul General at Addis Ababa. In this connection, the Secretary referred to the letter which the President had addressed on this subject to the Prince Regent within the past two months.21
Dr. Martin, with Mr. Osborne’s assistance, then explained the proposal which he hoped to make to appropriate commercial interests in this country for the building of a dam at Lake Tsana. He referred to the desire of the British to build this dam themselves and also a road from the Lake to the Sudan boundary. He explained that the Ethiopians were fearful lest if the British did this work the control of the Ethiopian Government over this part of its territory would be gravely threatened. Dr. Martin asked the Secretary whether the Department would have any objection to his attempts to interest an appropriate American concern or concerns in this project. The Secretary said that we not only had no objection to the project but that we would favor that sort of thing. Dr. Martin then referred to his intention to try and get a loan in this country the proceeds of which would be used for educational work in Ethiopia. He asked whether we would have any objection to such a loan. The Secretary replied that we would have no objection whatsoever. Finally, Dr. Martin brought up the question of obtaining arms and munitions in this country.22 The Secretary said he was not fully informed regarding the effect of applicable international conventions upon Ethiopia’s right to purchase arms and munitions abroad. He expressed the opinion, however, that unless Ethiopia by virtue of these conventions had been placed among those countries which could not purchase arms and munitions abroad he saw no difficulty in the carrying out of Dr. Martin’s ideas on this subject. It having been suggested that the British, French and Italians had some sort of a control over this matter, the Secretary intimated that he was not inclined to consider the existence of any such control as settling the question.
- Representative of the Ethiopian Government on special mission in the United States.↩
- Private secretary to Dr. Martin.↩
- New York lawyer, acting as legal adviser to Dr. Martin.↩
- Not printed.↩
- Not printed.↩
- Letter of July 26, 1927, ante, p. 593.↩
- For previous correspondence on this subject, see Foreign Relations, 1922, vol. ii, pp. 110 ff.↩