500.A15a3/162: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Great Britain (Dawes)
242. Your 266. For Prime Minister.
1. We have now spent the past week in most earnest consideration of the Prime Minister’s proposed British cruiser fleet of 339,000 displacement tons comprising 15 large 8-inch cruisers—146,000 tons; 14 new replacement cruisers—91,000 tons, and 21 of the old 6-inch cruisers, 101,000 tons, which program includes scrapping the four Hawkins class.
2. Our Naval Board reports to us this morning that in an endeavor to meet the British proposals just as closely as they can they will for this purpose accept as representing parity with such a program, after taking into account both the age and gun factors, an American fleet comprising 21 8-inch 10,000 ton cruisers—that is 210,000 tons; 10 of the Omaha class—70,000 tons; and 5 new cruisers of about 7,000 tons 6-inch class—about 35,000 tons, making a total of about 315,000 displacement tons.
3. We are repeating separately the memorandum of our 225 of the points of agreement in which we have deleted the 8th and 9th paragraphs as suggested by you and we have changed the wording of the new paragraphs 8 and 9 to coincide with the above. We have purposely left out mentioning the total number of British and American ships in these paragraphs 8 and 9 as it seems to us it would [Page 223] create less discussion and allow larger liberty of action by placing the whole question on a tonnage basis subject to the yardstick rather than upon the number of ships.
We have also simplified the memorandum by adding the words “scrapping, obsolescence and construction” to paragraph fourth and deleting the same words from paragraph seventh.
4. We have also reconstructed the new eleventh paragraph from the old thirteenth.
5. We suggest that the memorandum can be given to the other powers in issuing the call for conference and given to the public at the same time but that the contents of this and other cables should be held confidential. We expect to be consulted as to form of call for conference and as to time and form of giving publicity to memorandum.