500.A15/870
The British Embassy to the Department of State
Memorandum
The substance of the memorandum communicated to His Majesty’s Ambassador on the 4th instant by the Secretary of State regarding the forthcoming meeting of the Preparatory Committee on Disarmament at Geneva was duly forwarded to His Majesty’s Government.
His Majesty’s Government have taken note with pleasure of the renewed expressions of readiness on the part of the United States Government to examine in a friendly spirit any further proposals [Page 83] which His Majesty’s Government may be able to formulate. They are, however, bound to discuss such questions with the Dominion Governments and they feel sure that the United States Government will appreciate that this fact and the proximity of the approaching General Election in England make it difficult for them to reach final decisions at the present moment. But they are most anxious to avoid further public discussion and possible controversy until there has been an opportunity for a full and confidential exchange of views between them and the United States Government.
His Majesty’s Government have gained the impression from the memorandum from the Department of State that the United States Government have not fully understood their present proposal and they would offer the following explanations with a view to clearing up such misapprehension.
His Majesty’s Government had not contemplated that the Preparatory Committee should consider programmes at all events at the present stage. Their proposal was merely that in the event of discussion on the present lines failing once more to produce any appreciable result, the Committee should be asked to consider whether alternative procedure by programmes would not be more effective. It would perhaps be too much to expect a final answer to this question at the forthcoming session. Delegates could only be invited to obtain the views of their Governments and it would in all probability be necessary to adjourn the proceedings in order to give time for consideration. While this proposal perhaps goes somewhat beyond mere procedure, the fact that the Committee itself is charged with interpreting its own mandate in a very liberal sense should be borne in mind.
The original purpose of the Committee was to prepare for a general Disarmament Conference but the conclusion was reached two years ago and a decision taken accordingly that the most practical method of preparation would be for the Committee to draw up a skeleton convention under which the signatory Powers would be bound to keep forces and armaments within figures which would be given in tables annexed to the Convention. The figures in these tables, which would be left blank in the skeleton Convention, would be filled in by each Power participating in the eventual general Conference on Disarmament.
The endeavours of the Committee have been devoted to preparing the framework of this Convention under which estimates of their requirements for the duration of the Convention in uniform tables or categories would be presented by the various Governments concerned. It would doubtless be more satisfactory if it were possible to secure [Page 84] general agreement in regard to the tables so that there might be uniformity in the returns of all Governments. But it has so far proved impossible to achieve this desirable result and if disagreement should persist, His Majesty’s Government considered that it would be better than nothing to invite Governments to send in programmes in the fullest and best form they could devise. Something practical would thus be achieved at the sacrifice of a degree of uniformity and the point at which the Committee has been seeking to arrive would be reached by a slightly different route.
It is quite true, as the memorandum from the Department of State points out, that the Committee is not authorised to deal with “quantitative proposals” and it was not the intention of His Majesty’s Government to suggest that it should. It is of course also true that the Committee is composed only of representatives of a limited number of Powers, but this limited Committee is now endeavouring to agree on a formula for uniform returns which the Council would be asked to submit to the general Disarmament Conference as a basis for its work.
It is naturally impossible to foretell what the subsequent procedure would be in the event of the Committee accepting the proposal for the submission of programmes but the idea in the mind of His Majesty’s Government is merely that the Committee, if forced to recognise the difficulty of securing a completely uniform model for returns, should recommend the Council to invite Powers to send in returns in their own way. These returns could of course be based on tables insofar as agreement had been reached in regard to tables and in other cases contain the fullest and frankest information.
His Majesty’s Government realise that the Committee’s Convention, if it could be attained, would be more satisfactory, but they considered that, if continued disagreement prevented its attainment, the short cut to the same result—which their proposal was intended to provide—would be preferable to making no progress at all. It might at least put some check on competition in armaments, some symptoms of which can, unfortunately, be observed while the discussions of the Committee, fruitless as they have so far proved, continue.
While it is true that the proposal of His Majesty’s Government might not, to quote the State Department’s memorandum, “constitute an advance in limitation and reduction”, it should at least achieve as much as the Committee’s draft Convention, for under that Convention each signatory Power will insert its own figures in the annexed tables. This is surely nothing more than announcing its programme and undertaking to be bound by that programme. His Majesty’s Government feel in any case that failing agreement [Page 85] along other lines this may prove the best method of preparing the ground for reduction in future.
Some Governments, if given full latitude as to the form in which they send in their programmes, might conceivably produce them in a form which was very unsatisfactory and incomplete and thus render it impossible eventually to conclude the Convention. But such Governments would find themselves placed in a very invidious position and it is natural to expect that they would be anxious to appear in the best possible light in view of the pressure of public opinion. Moreover, the same difficulty might arise in any case when the time came for Governments to fill in the tables under the Committee’s Convention.
His Majesty’s Government would emphasise in conclusion that they have put forward this idea with the main object of achieving something practical without loss of valuable time, rather than adjourning without accomplishing anything. It was not, however, their wish to adopt it at the forthcoming meeting of the Committee unless they could be sure that the United States Government would not oppose it. The demand for its application in naval as well as other phases might be difficult to resist, and they were anxious that further inacceptable proposals for preparing the ground should not complicate the already difficult question of naval disarmament.
The line which discussion of naval problems has taken up to the present in the Committee has led to a point where His Majesty’s Government, for their part, see no immediate prospect of issue—unless their idea of submitting programmes commended itself to the United States Government as paving the way to a solution—and it is for that reason that they were desirous of avoiding public discussion at Geneva which might do no more than revive old controversies.