Office of the Historian

500.A15/1168: Telegram

The Secretary of State to the Chairman of the American Delegation (Gibson)

[Paraphrase]
Washington, December 5, 1930—4 p.m.

20. Your telegrams No. 54 and No. 55, December 4, 7 p.m., and 9 p.m., respectively. I approve tenor and purpose of your speech, but I feel that inclusion of Lincoln quotation makes it slightly too denunciatory. That would probably be the particular bit on which the press would seize, and give rise to statements that American delegation was announcing that Preparatory Commission had been engaged in fooling the world for many years.89

Stimson
  1. By telegram No. 57, December 6, 10 p.m., Mr. Gibson informed the Department that at the end of the sixth paragraph the entire last sentence beginning “Exaggerated statements” had been eliminated. Mr. Gibson’s speech as delivered on December 9 is printed in League of Nations, Documents of the Preparatory Commission, Series X, p. 408.↩