500.A15a3/101: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Great Britain (Dawes)
201. Your telegrams No. 215 and No. 216, August 1. We understand, at least in some degree, the difficulties which the Prime Minister is up against and we appreciate the sincerity and frank friendliness of his message. The fact that you and Gibson are to confer with the Prime Minister again on Tuesday is very satisfactory to us. Mr. MacDonald must be conscious of the fact that he has now reached the nub of the difficulty; that the actuality of figures must be dealt with by him; that a quantitative proposition is being dealt with by him and that it is a case of either increasing one or reducing the other if two unequal quantities are to be made equal. Candidly, we do not know any other method of attacking the problem, nor can we see where our analysis of the facts, as set forth in our previous telegrams, is wrong; neither have we changed our minds as to the kind of an agreement that we deem worth-while reaching. It is felt that Mr. MacDonald will not misunderstand our absolute frankness in commenting upon his letter.
- 1.
- At the conference held in Geneva in 1927 Great Britain stated its absolute need of a large number of six-inch-gun cruisers and that she [Page 175] should match the United States in eight-inch-gun cruisers and it was the opinion of the American representatives that the United States was driven to a large cruiser program at Geneva. An attempt has been made by us to reexamine the basis of our difficulty and a decision has been reached by us that all these naval needs, basically, were relative and that we will accept reduction of our cruiser program if parity by classes can be obtained.
- 2.
- The Prime Minister, it appears to us, is still accepting the statement made by the British at Geneva of their need of small cruisers and it still seems to have an intrinsic basis of truth to Mr. MacDonald. Candidly we are doubtful that Great Britain’s need is as great as he seems to think and also we are doubtful of the necessity, if Great Britain has a fleet of small cruisers, of her even nearly matching the United States’ strength in 10-thousand-ton cruisers.
- 3.
- We have great belief in the usefulness of the yardstick which we proposed. Its essential usefulness is demonstrated by the fact that some fair allowance can be made for the difference between six and eight-inch guns and for relative ages within the cruiser class. The United States stands ready to use this yardstick as a bridge as far as it will go, but this alone will not span the wide gap which exists between the fleets of Great Britain and the United States and it had been our hope that reduction rather than increase would be measured by it.
- 4.
- Mr. MacDonald has not yet fully considered the actual effects on tonnage, we would like to point out, if he agrees that parity is to be reached in 1936 and that the cruiser obsolescence age is to be 20 years. Assuming this to be so, without any scrapping at all it is possible that the present British fleet of effectives might remain in existence until 1934. A substantial number of the older small cruisers would be scrapped at that time owing to the 20-year period of obsolescence; and if the obsolescence age be accelerated, and when Mr. MacDonald comes to study the actual figures he will find it almost certainly must be accelerated, still more cruisers would be scrapped. Such being the conditions for the two years, 1934–36, the number of British cruiser units will be smaller than is the case at present. It is possible that under such circumstances some of the dangers which Mr. MacDonald conceives might exist for those two years. To protect against any such occurrence, has Mr. MacDonald considered the use of a political clause which would call for a revision in case a threat of naval construction was made by any power, similar to the suggestion made during the Geneva Conference?
In paragraph three of his communication Mr. MacDonald refers to three other naval powers effectively armed to which he must give consideration besides the United States. It is difficult for us to [Page 176] imagine such a political combination as he refers to and still more difficult to imagine that it will be balanced or made impossible by the number of units of small cruisers that he is discussing. It does not seem likely that the addition of a dozen small cruisers to Britain’s existing fleet would affect the situation should he, in truth, find Great Britain surrounded by a host of enemies in 1934 when his fleet might begin to decrease in numbers.
Mr. MacDonald refers in point 14 of his note to the effect of a holiday in cruiser building which would reduce every naval dockyard to a nucleus with later expansion for replacement, and “that does not commend itself to me as a business proposition” he states. Why it should not we utterly fail to see. The British people might be far better off that those naval docks were employed in building merchant ships and that the subsidy, if there is to be a subsidy, should be for trade and not for the expansion of naval construction. If Mr. MacDonald can keep his cruiser building down until 1936, there is a substantial chance that the expansion for replacement will never take place.
Cannot Mr. MacDonald see that he is assuming what he thinks is an actual and positive need for small cruisers as something that is true today, as it was at Geneva in 1927, and in 1936 is sure to be true also?
It is suggested that Mr. MacDonald reexamine that feeling and that he should certainly not in his own mind think there is any business argument against declaring a holiday in cruiser building in Great Britain.
We would again repeat that the problem which he faces is one of a quantitative nature. We still believe that a fair and sound solution is possible if he will hasten obsolescence and keep construction to an absolute minimum, but no solution that results in an agreement for the United States to construct to parity with an increased British cruiser fleet appears to us a worth-while result of what the two Governments have been striving to accomplish.