500.A15a3/176: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Great Britain (Dawes)
249. Reference your telegrams No. 269, September 13; No. 270, September 13; No. 272, September 16; and No. 273, September 17.
Over the week end it has been possible more carefully to review your telegrams No. 269 and No. 270 in connection with those which we sent and to which yours were a reply; we have also further consulted on the subject with the President. The letter to you from MacDonald of September 14 [13] contains several statements indicating a possible misunderstanding which it is my wish should be avoided at all costs. Our telegram No. 243, September 11, contains the following:62
“The final result of our cable No. 242 is that the Prime Minister’s technical experts and ours are apart on only one point and on that point are not far apart. This particular point is represented by the question as to whether three of the American cruisers are to be of the 8-inch 10,000 ton type or whether there is to be a substitution for them of say four cruisers of the 6-inch gun type, or in the more recent view of the Prime Minister, your 266, four, the question as to whether these three cruisers of 10,000 tons are to have 8-inch guns or 6-inch guns mounted upon them.”
I was endeavoring in these statements to clarify on the President’s behalf the opposing proposals made in these negotiations between us respectively, in which our minimum offer was for the United States to have twenty-one cruisers of a tonnage of 10,000 and with 8-inch guns; all substitutions proposed for these cruisers were suggestions coming from the side of the British. It is an error for paragraph 1 of MacDonald’s letter to treat our statement above quoted as though the President had accepted the Prime Minister’s proposal for equipping 10,000 ton cruisers with 6-inch guns. That suggestion has been rejected by our Naval Board which considers that there would be no [Page 239] advantage in equipping 10,000 ton ships with 6-inch guns and that the tonnage of such 6-inch gun cruisers as the American Navy may accept should be approximately 7,000. Thus our minimum position as stated in paragraph 2 of our No. 242, September 11, remains and we are very anxious that no misunderstanding as to this should be in Mr. MacDonald’s mind.
Unless there is a reduction in the proposed British cruiser total, we do not see any means of reducing this limit on our part. There has been an opportunity now for us to review the results of these discussions up to the present time and I am expecting a letter from the President in which he will outline his views on these results; I shall communicate it to you so that you may acquaint MacDonald with them. It is my hope that until the receipt of this letter no further public statements will be made.
For the Ambassador’s confidential information and with reference to his telegrams Nos. 272 and 273 of September 16 and 17 respectively.
The dangers which might follow from having a naval expert accompany MacDonald to this country are recognized by us; however, considering the expressed desire of the Prime Minister to start a discussion of this sort, it is our opinion that to bring an officer with him with whom he could consult would be a smaller evil than to have a unilateral conversation in which it will be possible that our side would be held to responsibility while MacDonald would be enabled to advance the absence of technical advice on his side as an excuse for refusing to enter into commitments, a situation which would result in a very difficult position for us. From the beginning I have insisted on the importance of an adjustment before the Conference of all the differences outstanding between the two nations; my hand has been forced, however, by the pressure of the dates available for the Prime Minister’s visit. These have left insufficient opportunity to close what, in my feeling, may at the Conference become a serious gap. The statement which he gave out yesterday relative to the extent of that cleavage has served to make the difficulty greater by drawing the public’s attention to it, thereby to a certain extent stressing the position of the big navy advocates in this country who no doubt will fix their opposition to any reduction on the part of the United States unless it appears as the reply to a corresponding scaling down of British strength. All published figures prior to that statement were mere guesses on the part of the press. Therefore I wish you to understand that in my opinion the situation is still open to grave developments and although the closeness of our present position is such that it is impossible for me to believe that the Conference will leave the gap unbridged, it would nevertheless make our situation much easier if it were possible to find a solution before the Conference.
[Page 240]Concerning MacDonald’s discussions with Japan, France and Italy, there is no objection on my part to his assumption of the burden of testing their attitude; however, I hope that until he receives the President’s letter he will not proceed with such discussions.
- Quotation not paraphrased.↩