500.A15a3/449a: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Great Britain (Dawes)
326. The Chargé d’Affaires of the British Embassy came in yesterday to discuss a tentative outline of procedure for the Naval Conference [Page 291] and to inquire if we agreed to this outline in principle. The proposal was that a plenary session be held for speeches of welcome, replies and for organization of the Conference on January 21, and that on Wednesday, January 22 a “private plenary session” should be held for the purpose of set speeches by the various delegates discussing the whole naval problem. I was strongly opposed to the second item concerning a private plenary session, since the President and I are both of the opinion that the chances of success will be the better the fewer set speeches are made in the early part of the Conference. I think furthermore that it is utterly impossible to keep private a plenary session, the result of which would only be that press accounts of such a session would be announced in advance and would consist of a series of rumors both ill advised and contentious. I suggested to Mr. Campbell, as an alternative, that a plenary session should take place on the first day as planned, that on the second day there should be a private meeting between the heads of the various delegations and that the third day should be occupied with a further plenary session for organizing and for dividing the work of the Conference into committees. Campbell has reported these points of view direct to the Foreign Office, but the President and I feel so strongly the need for avoiding the possibility that the various delegations might assume attitudes in public early in the Conference from which they could not recede (thereby converting what was intended to be a peaceable conference into a battleground) that I think this matter should be discussed by you as soon as possible with both the Prime Minister and with Henderson for the purpose of making sure that in the arrangement laid down before the first meeting no opportunity will be afforded for anything but speeches of a most general nature. I think the less rules and regulations laid down in advance, the better; thereby the Conference will be placed in a position to determine its own procedure in a way best suited to the circumstances obtaining at the time, after arrival of the delegates at London.