500.A15a4/6
Memorandum by the Secretary of State of a Conversation With the British Ambassador (Lindsay)
The British Ambassador called in reference to the suggestion that we should accept an American Vice Presidency of the coming General Arms Conference, the President of the Conference being Beneš and the other Vice President being Munch of Denmark. I told him flatly that we would not accept such a position, and I told him that my chief disappointment about the matter was the attitude on the part of Great Britain, France, Italy and Germany, in respect to such Conference. I told him I did not see how such a Conference could possibly be successful unless those four Powers got to work early and made the most thorough kind of preparation and this proposition indicated that they were standing off and not making any such preparation, and that it tended to make the whole think look like a farce. I told him that I was not declining because of lack of interest in the Conference; but I in fact regarded the question of disarmament as the most important dangerous question in Europe today. He said he agreed with me on that. I told him that when I realized from my own experience how much preparation we had carefully made for a Five Power Naval Conference on comparatively few questions, my disappointment was all the keener in regard to a conference involving infinitely more difficulties and questions as this coming conference would.
We then had a very frank talk about the difficulties of the situation and its importance.