500.A15a3/1156e: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in France (Edge)49
260. This morning I had a long conversation with the French Ambassador which followed these lines:
I told Claudel that, with the date of the meeting of the Preparatory Commission set for November 6, the urgency became greater that some arrangement should be reached between France and Italy on the naval questions between them, lest inflammatory speeches be made at the forthcoming session.
I pointed out to him that if France and Italy should make no settlement, the British almost certainly would have to invoke the escalator clause of the Naval Treaty, a step which would have a profound effect on world public opinion and would discredit all efforts to reduce naval armament. The blame for any such alterations, furthermore, naturally would fall upon France and Italy.
I told the Ambassador that I felt that it was my duty to point out to him and to the Italian Ambassador as well that, without entering into a binding treaty, it might be possible for each country to make a unilateral declaration of a reasonable and nonprovocative program of naval construction up to 1936, reserving until that date, with full liberty of action, the theoretical questions which had brought about a deadlock.
I let Claudel know that this country, in the Preparatory Commission, had never put impediments in the way of the land defenses of France, as it was recognized that France’s chief danger had always been from the land. In the case of the French naval program, however, the man in the streets might take the view that that was an element of provocation.
I asked the Ambassador to consider whether France, in reality, were not reducing her security through the effect that increases in [Page 141] her Navy would produce upon her neighbors and friends, Great Britain especially.
Claudel was not encouraging in his replies but he promised to communicate the entire conversation to his Government.
Yesterday I talked along similar lines with the Italian Ambassador, and today I had conversations with the British and the Japanese Ambassadors, urging that they join in representations of the character indicated, in the hope that concerted action of this sort would bring about some result.
- Sent also to the Ambassador in Great Britain as telegram No. 260.↩