500.A15/913
The Secretary of State to the Chairman of the American Delegation (Gibson)
Sir: The British Ambassador came to see me the other day and wanted to obtain some information as to the extent of the suggestions contained in your speech of April 22, before the Preparatory Disarmament Commission. He said that there had been so many wild and detailed stories that one could not tell what to believe.
I told him that so far as I had observed those stories were wholly imaginary. I repeated my view of the proposal as to categories and explained specifically what was intended thereby so far as I knew, namely that the proposal or suggestion, which was not in any way completed, was merely to provide for the elaboration of a formula which would permit a common estimate of the strategic usefulness of a ship in one class to be made in terms of a ship in another class contained within the same category, giving as an example the cruiser question as it appears in the British and American points of view.
I took occasion to repeat that the fundamental proposition between our two countries upon which we had all been able to agree was a parity in navies and that such parity seemed absolutely essential; [Page 102] that this proposition ought not to be departed from; that the whole purpose of our present suggestion was to permit sufficient flexibility within this general principle of parity so as to permit an agreement between us and to prevent us building against each other which in my opinion would be the greatest possible disaster.
He agreed and said that it was unthinkable that we should ever get into a war. He asked about the French proposal and inquired whether it applied as between cruisers and destroyers. I told him I thought it did and we examined the portion of your speech in which you came out in favor of it.
On the same day the French Ambassador came to see me on the same subject. I told him that your suggestion was really an extension of the French proposition so as to cover units in the same category of ships. He wanted to know whether it applied to anything else but cruisers and also whether it applied to naval questions between France and Italy. I told him what I understood was the suggestion. He said that it would be manifestly unfair to apply as between France and Italy the ratio 1.6 in respect to cruisers. Italy had only one sea to guard and France had two seas and some distant colonies. I told him that in making our suggestion we undoubtedly primarily had reference to our own problem with Great Britain. We had certainly no intention of increasing the difficulties for France or Italy.
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