500.A15a4/304½
Memorandum by the Secretary of State of a Conversation With the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Henderson), London, July 30, 1931, at 12:15 p.m.22
I went to the Foreign Office and had a talk with Mr. Henderson over his plans for the General Disarmament Conference next February. I told him that we expected to be on hand and to help at the Conference, but we did not think that anything definite would be done until after the French elections in May. He agreed. I asked him what his views were. He said he thought the Conference would meet on the 2d of February and that a debate in the nature of what they called in the House of Commons “a second reading debate” would take place and last until Easter. By that he meant a debate in which there were no rules of relevance, but the whole subject could be discussed in all language. Then he thought a commission for each of the three services, land, sea and air, probably would be appointed and several other committees, including a committee on political issues which would especially include security, would be appointed, and that those committees would take up the work of thrashing out and sorting down the possibilities.
I told him that I had heard from the Prime Minister of the preparatory work which they were doing in Britain and I should be very glad if Henderson would give me the details. He told me that a three-party commission had been appointed some three months ago containing Lloyd George, Samuel, Lord Lothian and perhaps others representing the Liberals; Chamberlain, Sir Samuel Hoare, Lord [Page 509] Inchcape and Captain Eden representing the Conservatives; and the Prime Minister, Henderson, Snowden, Thomas and the heads of the three services, namely, Alexander (sea), Shaw (land) and Amerlie (air) representing the Government. He had brought in the dossier of papers which had been considered by the committee and said that they contained at least three papers by the War Office, 6 by the Admiralty, 11 by the Foreign Office and 5 of criticism by opposition members. These papers stated the positions of the three services. The Foreign Office papers contained a discussion of the various treaties and pacts and a history of the position of the respective British parties, also a documentary history of the disarmament program and of the difficulties and problems which it confronted.
I told him it would be of great help to me if he could let me have some of this information which had thus been collected, excluding, of course, matters which were secret or confidential to the British Government. He told me he would confer with the Prime Minister and he had no doubt he could let me have a good deal. (Note: Later in the evening at dinner he told me he had conferred with the Prime Minister and the latter had assented, and he would send to me at Scotland these papers.)
I told Henderson of the attitude which I had taken with regard to the Disarmament Congress, how I deemed it so important that I was unwilling to let American participation be made a scapegoat for non-preparation by the Europeans. I pointed out that disarmament by us would have no influence on the solution of such European problems as those between France and Germany and France and Italy, et cetera, et cetera, but we would use the full pressure of our moral influence to try to make the Congress a success and would work hard to find any way in which our influence could be exerted. He called my attention to an article by Maginot, the French Minister for War, reported in the London Times of July 28, as an instance of the present French attitude. Also of course he referred to the French memorandum of July 22.