711.5112 U.S/16
The Secretary of State to the French Ambassador ( Claudel )
Excellency: I have the honor to refer to your note of January 7, 1928, transmitting an amended text of the proposed arbitration treaty between the Governments of France and the United States incorporating the changes which your Government desires to have made in the draft which I submitted with my note of December 28, 1927. I will discuss the proposed changes in the order in which they occur in the amended draft.
The Government of the United States is entirely willing to substitute in the first clause of the Preamble the phrases “President of the French Republic” and “President of the United States of America” for the phrases “French Republic” and “United States of America”, respectively.
The Government of the United States has no objection to the insertion of a clause in the Preamble referring to the treaty of September 15, 1914, if the Government of France attaches real importance thereto. It suggests, however, that the specific reference to the treaty of September 15, 1914, which is found in Article I, sufficiently recognizes the existence and validity of that treaty.
The Government of the United States is not entirely clear as to the force and effect of the proposed change in that clause of the Preamble which refers to the arbitration treaty of February 10, 1908. Since in its opinion the draft treaty now under discussion definitely enlarges the scope and obligations of the treaty of 1908, it believes it would be desirable specifically to record that fact in the Preamble. In these circumstances it would prefer to retain that clause in the form in which it was submitted to your Government.
The amended text forwarded with your note of January 7, 1928, omits from Article II the phrase “which it has not been possible to adjust by diplomacy” which occurs immediately after the first comma in the draft submitted with my note of December 28, 1927. I have no doubt that this omission was unintentional, since the inclusion of such a clause appears necessary to complete the scope of the article.
The new paragraph which your Government proposed to add to Article II presents, as you have been orally informed, a much more serious question. In consenting to the ratification of The Hague convention of 1907 for the pacific settlement of international disputes, the Senate of the United States adopted the following resolution:5
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
[Page 816]“Resolved further, as a part of this act of ratification, That the United States approves this convention with the understanding that recourse to the permanent court for the settlement of differences can be had only by agreement thereto through general or special treaties of arbitration heretofore or hereafter concluded between the parties in dispute; and the United States now exercises the option contained in article fifty-three of said convention, to exclude the formulation of the ‘compromis’ by the permanent court, and hereby excludes from the competence of the permanent court the power to frame the ‘compromis’ required by general or special treaties of arbitration concluded or hereafter to be concluded by the United States, and further expressly declares that the ‘compromis5 required by any treaty of arbitration to which the United States may be a party shall be settled only by agreement between the contracting parties, unless such treaty shall expressly provide otherwise.”
In these circumstances I am very glad to have received your oral assurances that your Government has agreed not to press this amendment.
In conclusion, it gives me pleasure to inform you that the Government of the United States is entirely willing that there be added to Article III the new paragraph (d) which your Government has suggested for the purpose of excluding from the scope of the treaty disputes the subject matter of which “depends upon or involves the observance of the obligations of France under the covenant of the League of Nations”.
I transmit herewith for convenient reference a revised text of the draft treaty embodying the changes suggested by your Government and agreed to by the Government of the United States as set forth above.6
Accept [etc.]
- The following omission indicated in the original despatch. For complete text of resolution, see Malloy, Treaties, 1776–1909, vol. ii, p. 2247.↩
- The following omission indicated in the original despatch. For complete text of resolution, see Malloy, Treaties, 1776–1909, vol. ii, p. 2247.↩
- Not printed; see text of signed treaty, infra. ↩