500.A15a4/22
Memorandum by the Assistant Secretary of State (Castle) of a Conversation With the British Ambassador (Lindsay)
The Ambassador asked me whether I knew of the conversations he had been having with the Secretary on the subject of disarmament and I said that I did. He wanted to discuss that subject. He said that his Government would be very deeply regretful that the United States was not willing to accept the position of one of the vice presidents of the disarmament conference and to take part in the preliminary negotiations. I told the Ambassador that, of course, he must understand and I supposed his Government must understand that this was not true as a general principle, that far from declining to be of any assistance in the preparatory work for the conference, we were only protesting against a method of preparation which seemed to us so inadequate that the Conference might result in futility. The Ambassador said that he understood this himself and sympathized with our point of view, but felt that his Government did not understand it. I told him that General Dawes had talked shortly concerning [Page 483] the matter with the Prime Minister and that Mr. MacDonald had seemed sympathetic to the idea of very careful preparation.
The Ambassador said he wanted to ask one question which he had been instructed by London to ask. He said he did not know whether I would wish to answer. The question was whether our refusal to accept for this country a position of vice president to prepare, with Doctor Beneš and the Danish Foreign Minister, the ground for the conference meant that the United States had changed its point of view on the whole disarmament question and whether it meant that we were no longer planning fully to cooperate as we had in the Preparatory Commission. I told the Ambassador that I was entirely willing to answer this question and that the answer obviously was that we had not changed our position, that it would rather seem that our position was even stronger as to the necessity of real reduction of armament, since we were seeking to find some method of preparation for the conference so thorough that there would be hope of success. The Ambassador said that this assurance would be of some comfort to his Government. He said that he did not quite see how the great nations could get together to discuss preparations for the conference without having really a preliminary conference which would be something like an extension of the work of the Preparatory Commission. I said that a preliminary conference of the great nations would also probably frighten the small nations, that I could not see, however, why there could not be the fullest and frankest of diplomatic exchanges, supplemented by conversations such as the conversations here between the President and Mr. MacDonald. The Ambassador said he doubted whether this would get us anywhere and cited the fact that the extensive conversations the British Government had had with the French and Italians before the Naval Conference had led to no result whatever. I asked him if he thought we should be any more likely to get somewhere in the Disarmament Conference if we did nothing in preparation for it and he had to admit that there would be little hope under these circumstances.