500.A15a3/191
Memorandum by the Secretary of State
The French Ambassador called and said that he had two communications for me, but that they were not notes and that he would like to have them considered informal. He handed me the following translation:
“On September 16th, Lord Robert Cecil presented to the Third Commission of the Assembly of the League of Nations, a resolution, the text of which appears in the New York Times of September 17th, concerning the limitation of armaments.
“In the opinion of the French Government such a proposal reopens the discussion of questions definitely settled last April. By claiming the limitation of material, either directly by enumeration, or indirectly by budgetary limitation, the resolution might in particular compel the French delegation to take up again before the Preparatory Committee of Disarmament, the proposals of limitation of material and limitation of expenses that they had abandoned in order to take into consideration the point of view of the American delegation.
“Besides, the adoption of the British proposal would prejudge decisions of the Preparatory Committee concerning the control of armaments while, in order to comply with the wishes of the American delegation, the French delegation, at the last session of the Preparatory Committee, declared that they would present on this special point transactional propositions.
“It is the intention of the French delegation to ask that the British resolution be rejected, stating mainly that it is impossible for a Commission to reopen now questions decided upon by the Preparatory Commission, with the cooperation of the United States delegation. The French delegation would add that if the Preparatory Commission is going to overcome the difficulties that have been encountered until now, the best procedure is to follow the attitude taken by Mr. Hugh [Page 251] Gibson, that is to say, to work for a practical agreement by the way of mutual concessions.
“If the French delegation were opposed by the majority, they would ask that the text of the resolution mention the naval program, without which the work of the Preparatory Commission cannot be finished, and the French delegation would recall on the occasion the principles laid down by them in 1927 and agreed upon by the American delegation last April.
“The French Government is in favor of continuing the collaboration, started last Spring, between the American and French delegations and to limit the intervention of the Assembly of the League of Nations into the preparatory work of disarmament, to the adoption of a text expressing the wish that the Commission meets as soon as possible in order to terminate its work so that a general conference for reduction and limitation of land, sea and air armaments may be convoked during next year.
“September 19, 1929.”
The Ambassador showed me the French excerpts from the proceedings of the Preparatory Commission last May where there were remarks by the presiding officer and Mr. Gibson which he thought supported the statements in the memorandum handed to me. He said he assumed that I would want to take time to look it over and consider it and I thanked him and said I would. He then handed me the following, saying it was more important:
“The program of the future naval Conference and the questions which will be discussed by it, are not quite clear to the French Government.
“It was its understanding, according to indications given on several occasions by the Honorable Secretary of State and his representatives, that the Anglo-American conversations would lead only to agreements of devolution (meaning methods and categories) without deciding officially upon figures.
“In that case, the future Conference, which should remain within the limits of the Preparatory Commission, would simply have to outline plans by application of the principles proposed by France and agreed upon by the American Government according to Mr. Hugh Gibson’s declarations. The question of the figures of limitation should be left to the future General Conference, which will deal with the reduction of the three kinds of armaments (land, sea and air), and which will examine them with the aid of quantitative proposals of each Government for the limitation of its own armaments, taking into account conditions of security and special geographic or other necessities of its own national defense.
“September 20, 1929.”
I told the Ambassador that it was true that we had first approached these conversations from the standpoint of discussing the proposition made by Mr. Gibson and called the “yardstick”, but that we very soon found that it was impossible to confine the matter to the question of the yardstick alone and that the negotiations had taken a wider [Page 252] scope. I told him that the President’s speeches would have indicated that, going back as far as his Memorial Day address.69 Then I told Mr. Claudel what we had discussed, namely, the capital ship program where we discussed the possibility of postponing the replacements from 1931 to 1936; the destroyer category and the submarine category, in both of which the American Navy was superior to the British Navy and in which our position had been that we were willing to reduce as far as Great Britain would reduce; that in the cruiser category we had found that it was impossible to confine ourselves to the yardstick alone, that the British cruiser fleet was so much larger than the American cruiser fleet that no yardstick would bridge the gap, and that therefore it was necessary to come down to concrete realities and discuss whether Britain should scrap ships and if so, how much, and whether we should construct ships and if so, how many; and that therefore it had been necessary to talk figures and we had talked figures. But I assured him that throughout the discussion, from the very beginning, it had been mutually understood that all agreements between Great Britain and ourselves should be contingent upon the action of the other three powers at the suggested five power conference.
We then discussed the character of the General Conference. I told him it had been our view that five principal naval powers might get together and agree upon naval disarmament more easily than if other powers were present and that therefore we were thinking of a general conference composed of those five powers. He stated that that was not so easy on the part of the French whose naval defense was necessarily connected with their land defense—that communication by ship was just like communication by land and that naval action played a part with their land defense. I pointed out to him that our principal object in the entire negotiations was to remove the disagreement with Great Britain which had not only broken up the Conference of 1927 but had proved such a source of irritation between the two countries; that to us the settlement of this question was so much the most important matter on our horizon that it outweighed everything else. He pleaded for more preparatory discussions with the other powers, saying that he thought such preparatory discussions of the same type which we had been having would be very important. I asked him for advice on how they should be conducted; whether France wished to have such discussions with us which I pointed out could not involve any very important questions between us because we had no issues with France, or whether she had not better hold them, with Great Britain or with Italy. I told him that I fully approved of getting as many of these questions out of the way before [Page 253] the conference as possible. He said that that was his view. I asked him to consider it and talk it over with his Government and let us know what their suggestions were. He left me saying he felt much reassured and that he would talk over these matters with his Government.