Office of the Historian

500.A15a3/1325

The British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Henderson) to the American Ambassador in Great Britain (Dawes)30

[London,] June 5, 1930.
A 3861/1/45

Your Excellency: In the note No. 61131 which Your Excellency was so good as to address to me on June 5th you stated that it was the understanding of the Government of the United States that the word “category” in Article 19 of the London Naval Treaty, 1930, meant category or sub-category. Your Excellency added that the Government of the United States declared that it interpreted the Treaty to mean that vessels becoming over-age of either sub-category A or sub-category B of the cruiser categories (Article 16) shall be replaceable only in that sub-category.

2. His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom note the above understanding and interpretation of the London Naval Treaty of 1930 and concur therein. His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom do so without prejudice to Article 20 (a) of that Treaty under which they understand that the tonnage to be scrapped and replaced in the case of the British Commonwealth of Nations by the 91,000 tons of 6″ cruiser tonnage which may be completed before 31st December, 1936, comprises partly 6″ gun cruiser tonnage and partly cruiser tonnage of the 7.5″ gun “Effingham” class.

I have [etc.]

(For the Secretary of State)
Robert Vansittart
  1. Copy transmitted to the Department by the Ambassador as an enclosure to his despatch No. 1524, January 5, 1931; received January 14.↩
  2. Proceedings of the London Naval Conference, p. 297.↩