711.5412A/7: Telegram

The Secretary of State to the Minister in Switzerland (Wilson)

41. I, yesterday, handed the Swiss Chargé d’Affaires a draft of a proposed treaty of arbitration between the United States and Switzerland. The provisions of the draft operate to extend the policy of arbitration enunciated in the Convention signed at Washington, February 29, 1908,35 which expired by limitation December 23, 1918, and are identical in effect with the provisions of the Arbitration Treaty signed between the United States and France on February 6, 1928,36 and with the draft arbitration treaties submitted to the Spanish, British, Japanese, Italian, Norwegian, German, Portuguese, Danish, Austrian, Dutch and Hungarian Governments.37 In a covering note handed the Chargé d’Affaires at the same time I explained certain differences in the text of the draft treaty from the language of the French Treaty which were necessitated by the fact that no treaty of conciliation is in force between the United States and Switzerland as it is in the case of France and the United States. I added the suggestion that the Swiss Government might care to consider again the ratification of the so-called Bryan Treaty, signed by the two Governments on February 13, 1914,38 and said that this Government would be pleased if such a treaty could come into force between Switzerland and the United States.

The text of the proposed Treaty and my covering note will be forwarded in the next pouch.39

Kellogg
  1. Foreign Relations, 1908, p. 734.
  2. Vol. ii, p. 816.
  3. For correspondence, see under individual countries, except Norway, in volumes i and ii, and in the present volume. The treaty with Norway is printed in Department of State Treaty Series No. 788.
  4. Not printed.
  5. Draft not printed.