Papers relating to the foreign relations of the United States, 1929, Volume I

500.A15a3/101: Telegram

The Ambassador in Great Britain (Dawes) to the Secretary of State

London, August 1, 1929—5 p.m.
[Received 9:10 p.m.]

216. Following letter just received from the Prime Minister:

“My Dear General: I am very disappointed that the proposal which came out of the conversation on Monday between you and Mr. Gibson on the one hand and the First Lord and myself on the other is not acceptable to the President and that the explanation I gave in my note of the same date to you (that if we could get agreement with the other naval powers the cruisers figures might be still further reduced) does not modify his judgment. I have been studying the despatch you left with me this morning and it seems to me that it brings us for the moment back to an objective study of the actual facts of the position.

1. The President and I are striving to do two things. He wants parity in strength with Great Britain and to this I heartily agree; we both in addition wish to reduce naval armaments. The combination of both gives us a specially difficult practical problem.

2. In the British program of building there is not one ship included to be set against American strength. Were it so my task would be easy because you and I can just agree not to continue to build against each other and off would go the cruisers on both sides. Parity and reduction would then go hand in hand. I am in the ridiculous position therefore of appearing to be grudging in my negotiations because my country had not been assuming that yours was a potential enemy.

3. I am sure that the President, in the exercise of that fine understanding mind of his, will see that when, as a practical person, I have to face the question of the standard upon which parity is to be secured I must turn my thoughts from America and direct them to the rest of the world. These two predominant facts confront me: (1) There are three other naval powers armed very effectively and in a position to damage my country and the people for whose existence I am responsible. (2) There are our dominions with their needs and their fears. I must take these things into account. If I did not my existence as Prime Minister would soon be [apparent omission] and no agreement which I should make with your President would be worth the paper upon which it was written. He and I would be pursuing a vain thing. The standard upon which parity is to be based must therefore allow me to fulfill my obligations.

4. I am determined to make that standard low—lower than it is at present. Indeed, I wish to begin a policy which will reduce it to zero by making nations secure by other means than armament. But obviously my ability to do so depends for the moment not upon my country and yours but upon agreements which in cooperation with each other we can persuade the other powers to make mutually. The completeness of our agreement—not in spirit I hope because that so long as this Government lasts is absolute but in program details—will therefore depend upon the success of the conferences which will follow the termination of our work.

5. These are considerations which, when understood sympathetically by you, point to the inevitable conclusion that the figures upon which we now may agree must be rather high and would be subject to revision so soon as I know definitely what is to be my position as regards the other nations. In view of the difficulty which has arisen on the receipt of your last despatch, is not this the position? Whatever figures we may put before each other now must be provisional upon the agreements to be made with the other powers, and we could agree to examine them further whilst the wider negotiations are going on and settle them during that conference or at once after it.

6. As to this point I want to put on paper an assurance I have given you repeatedly by word of mouth. The figures I have put in are high but they have been used under no Admiralty pressure. There is a tremendous tide of opinion here in favor of agreement but public opinion would not stand against a rational proof that our friendship for the United States had left us exposed to any mischief-maker in the rest of the world. The Pact of Peace has crippled those mischief-makers but in the transition period public opinion will be tender and we must handle it in a statesmanlike way. Thinking of his own position I fear your President may smile at this but he will see how different my problem is from his. I only wish he were sitting by me so that we could expose that subject by continued conversation. So much for the standard of parity. Now as to reduction.

7. The figures I nave given to you and which the President rejects are in fact a reduction in the British estimates of millions per annum of actual expenditure. The cuts I have made alone amount to a gross reduction of over six million pounds sterling.

8. You are in a different position because in building to parity you will apparently have to increase your present strength.

9. As I understand it, however, you would reduce your program.

10. Now we are in this position. The programs have been devised to meet actual needs, so when we consider ‘naval armaments’ we must not only take into account actual floating tonnage plus the tonnage building in the yards but also the tonnage which without an agreement will inevitably be built. The proposals you put up to your Government will reduce that enormously. I emphasize that naval armaments are not what is built but what things remaining as they are must be built and when we use the word ‘reduction’ that must be taken into account.

11. Like your President I am not satisfied with that reduction alone but it will be a step and will set inevitabilities in motion which will lead to further reductions and I hark back to the results of the wider conference.

12. I see your President’s difficulty. At the moment the bulk of your cruiser strength is in a program; ours is on the water. If you nave parity you have to build a part of your program. That is an increase. Here we are two miserable men in authority determined to do the right thing and kept from it by all the devilish powers which have had a hand in making our past. How can we meet each other and overcome these powers?

13. I trusted much to your device of a ‘yardstick’ and I am sorry to see that it has disappeared from recent despatches. I still trust to it and wish we had it so that we could work on ‘effective’ and not on absolute tonnage.

14. 1936 has been suggested as the date of equation. That is good, but I must see my way clear so that any promise I make to you may be carried out to the last letter. If you say let us have a holiday in cruiser building then every naval dockyard will have to be reduced to a mere nucleus of repairing and conditioning men and after 1936 an expansion will have to take place for replacement. That does not commend itself to me as a business proposition. I agree to a date. The open question is: how is the time to be used and to what standards? Further negotiations might clear that up if we both work with the problems of each other in both of our minds.

15. Figures have been used again in our respective communications. In all my life I have never known the two sides in a naval affairs dispute to agree upon figures. I have listened to too many debates in the House of Commons. It was that we might come to a rough agreement upon them that I begged of you to have Mr. Gibson with us at our conference of last Monday. The only consideration I have is that I must look at the world with which I am in contact and the only real problem as I see it is how can I arrange strengths so as to enable Mr. Hoover to claim reductions and yet maintain parity. Can he not broaden his definition of reductions? Can he not bring up into prominence in his declarations his double problem of reduction and parity? Can he not show how he has maintained the latter whilst reducing the building which would have been necessary had he never taken the stand he has done! Before the larger conference and certainly after that conference has been held I would give further study to the figures which our conference of Monday the 29th accepted as a basis for work.

16. This is a long and in some parts very informal communication but our last interviews have undoubtedly cast dark clouds over our prospects. Still I will not let this thing go and this is written as a general statement of our position as your President has stated his, in the hope that we shall both strive to overcome our adverse circumstances.

17. I have cancelled my arrangements to go to my home today in order to write this. I shall go up tonight by train and shall be at the end of a telephone by eleven a.m. tomorrow. On Tuesday I am ready to fly back and have made arrangements with the Air Ministry to provide a machine. So I shall be available by five p.m. that day for a further conference, Mr. Gibson being present if possible and agreeable to you. Please let my secretary here know if that will hold good and he will inform the Air Ministry and myself. Or you can speak to me direct to Lossiemouth. Naturally I shall be anxious to know what reply you get if you send this to Washington.

Yours very sincerely, J. Ramsay MacDonald.”

Am wiring Gibson to whom copies of all my cable correspondence are regularly sent that I will expect him here Tuesday.

Dawes