500.A15a3/731: Telegram
The Acting Secretary of State to the Chairman of the American Delegation (Stimson)
171. Your telegram No. 103, March 3.
- 1.
- Your position that the United States should join in no Mediterranean Pact but would not object to an agreement of this sort among other powers, is in accordance with our views.
- 2.
- In principle, we accept articles 3 and 4 of the form of treaty [Page 42] proposed by you, and we agree that they follow article 21 of the Washington Treaty fairly closely. We are confident, however, that it would be an improvement if you could amend the concluding phrase of your article 3 to read “meet in conference with a view to agreement on alteration of the programs of naval armament.” We also suggest omitting the words “the amendment of the provisions” in the first sentence of your article 4, and substituting “alteration of programs” in their place. It is our purpose by these changes to emphasize that the Conference is not to be on political matters or to cover joint naval action, but merely to deal with programs of construction or scrapping armament. We want, in other words, such a clause to be definitely different from the one in the Four-Power Pacific Treaty, thus making it impossible to misunderstand the clause as one under which there might creep into being a new Holy Alliance of the Allied and Associated naval powers.
- 3.
- With regard to amending the Kellogg Pact, it is our feeling that it is due to the pact that the state of the world has been so far changed as to permit this Conference to bring about a reduction in arms now. The United States feels proud of its share in initiating the pact with France and does not desire to be mixed up in efforts to amend it which may not be understood by some of its signatories and which may seem to go too far to some of them. We would, nevertheless, if France so desires, agree to take up and explore, entirely separately from the naval treaty, the possibility of a general agreement by all nations to initiate investigation of controversies which have not otherwise been settled, thus making public opinion more effective. On the other hand, we cannot agree to consult as to other coercive sanctions or to consult only with the allied naval powers. An agreement of this sort would be so diluted and attenuated as to be of no real value to the French even for temporary political purposes unless there were an exaggeration of its meaning. It cannot, moreover, be doubted that opponents of naval reduction would exaggerate it as an excuse for belaboring the results of the London Conference if the naval treaty included any agreement for consultation or conference.
Mowrer’s57 press reports and those of other correspondents close to Briand indicate that an all-round 25 percent cut in programs is likely to be proposed by the French. Such proposals are obviously put forward solely with a view to causing embarrassment and reinforcing in our mind the desirability of your taking some such action as indicated in our telegram of yesterday, No. 167.
We are not, as we see it, particularly interested in the size of the French fleet inherently, except in so far as it reflects on us through [Page 43] boosting the British fleet, but it does seem to us that the Conference has reached a stage where our delegation is bound to be embarrassed by the French taking the offensive and raising serious disturbances in the United States, as they have already in various directions begun to do.
It seems to us from this distance improbable that there is any indication on the part of France of actually building a 725,000 ton fleet and that the British would be amply safe up to 1936 in proceeding with a program like the one we have outlined possibly even with such reduction in destroyers and submarines, and that a general provision that the British shall be free to take such steps as will give them protection in the event that the combined fleets of any two other powers, excepting the United States and Japan, shall exceed or threaten to exceed the British fleet.
Less even than France is Italy likely to build such a fleet and Britain would certainly be amply protected until 1936 under such an arrangement. It is not necessary to formulate in those terms the two-power condition.
The time has come, we strongly feel, for the American delegation to take the offensive against the French proposals by demanding a reduction in certain categories such as submarines and destroyers before the American public shall have become completely prejudiced against us through the French. The support of the American public would tend to be restored through any indicated demand on our part for limiting the tonnages now under discussion.
- Paul Scott Mowrer, special correspondent for the Chicago Daily News.↩