Foreign Relations of the United States Diplomatic Papers, 1932, General, Volume I

500.A15A4 Plenary Sesslons/19

Address Delivered by Mr. Hugh S. Gibson, Acting Chairman of the American Delegation, at the General Disarmament Conference, Geneva, February 9, 1932

Geneva, February 9, 1932

The United States enters the first world conference on the limitation and reduction of armaments with the determination to leave nothing undone to achieve substantial progress. It assumes that the same will predominates among all the nations represented in this conference. Nothing is contributed to our deliberations, indeed our efforts are only clouded with insincerity and pretense, if we fail to acknowledge the difficulties which just now surround the project before us. The part of statecraft is, however, neither to gloss over difficulties and thereby contribute to defeat, nor to invite despair by over-emphasis on the difficulties in the foreground. The situation demands calm consideration of the facts as they exist and courageous efforts to obtain a substantial solution. The impediments are familiar to the most elementary observer of international affairs of this kind. We meet with the necessity of coordinating motives and maturing agreement in a congress of nations larger than has ever before been assembled. We meet under the strain of economic distresses, international uncertainties and popular emotions which might easily engulf anything smaller in stature than the cause presented here. Our conference must not be diverted from achieving success on the vital questions by minor differences of a technical nature. The task before the nations of the world is not to minimize these problems but, fully mindful of them, to gather strength and determination from the conviction that the demand for a regime of international confidence, cooperation and peace will in the end have its way; that the men and nations of our own day who contribute to it will be counted in the end as enrolled in a victorious cause, and that in the long perspective of history those who are today reluctant and preoccupied with smaller interests will stand only as temporary impediments to a world-wide and inevitable movement.

The people of the United States have during the past generation played a useful and leading part in the movement for the limitation and reduction of arms. The Washington Conference of 1922³⁵ made the first concrete contribution in voluntary limitation. It met the then existing problem of armament at its most acute, its most threatening and its most conspicuous point, and by a restriction of naval armament among the powers who found themselves setting an unhappy example, made a long and decisive stride in the direction demanded by world opinion. Our people at that conference sacrificed, if not a real predominance, at least a potential predominance in weight and strength for warfare. The American people have been proud of the contribution which they made to that pact of temperate conduct and commonsense. In the London Naval Conference of 1930³⁶ the principle of limitation established for capital ships at the Washington meeting was enlarged to cover the whole field of equipment for warfare at sea by the three most heavily armed of the nations, and some progress was made toward including the two other powers most concerned. We enter the conference today with the practicability of the limitation upon arms established, with the demand for it augmented by general pride and satisfaction in the achievement already made, and with the United States again willing to play its appropriate part in further progress. The American delegation is prepared to consider any form of military limitation and reduction which promises real progress toward the feeling of international security, protection against surprise and restraint on the use of arms for purposes of aggression.

The burden and dangers of the gigantic machinery of warfare which are now being maintained in times of peace have reached a point where they threaten civilization itself. For two years past the people of every race have been confronted with an economic crisis from which no nation has been free. All the governments of the world have faced reduction of income, unsettled budgets, and dangers to the very stability of government itself. The United States while seriously affected by these difficulties has suffered somewhat less severely than many of the other nations. It is today able to maintain the burden of armaments as readily as any of the nations but it views that burden as unnecessary and inexcusable. No one will doubt the political instability of the world of which these arms are not alone the effect but also the cause. No one will doubt that they not only contribute to the economic debacle but that they threaten the peace of the world. Our American people look upon the statesmanship which permits the continuance of existing conditions as nothing less than failure. The time has gone by when the peoples of the world will long permit the continuance of this failure.

There is a feeling sometimes expressed that the convictions of the United States in this field, the faith of our people in an orderly and stable regime among the nations, and our conviction that the very existence of armaments unbalances the equilibrium, are a product of our geographical isolation and of our lack of experience of and exposure to the rivalries and strains of the European Continent. In answer, the American people point to the fact that the system of competitive armament, of alliances and cross alliances which has existed for centuries in Europe has failed to maintain peace and seems indeed to have been provocative of war, the results of which are such that victors and vanquished are victims alike. Furthermore, the altered conditions of international relationships, the development of communication and transport within the last generation to a point where the whole world is knit together by strands of commerce, finance and intimate contact, have today produced new international relationships which are utterly inconsistent with the older methods and formulas. America is convinced that the world should not go on to new movements and new tasks hampered by the garments of an older regime, and that the problem is only how promptly and smoothly mankind will cast aside the weapons and traditions of the old.

In the past every nation has justified its level of armament however high by the claim such levels were necessary for its national defense. Let us not forget, however, that new international commitments of binding force have introduced a new conception of what is needed by a nation for the purpose of defense. Such treaties and commitments bear upon practically all the nations here represented. In view of this new situation calling for new methods and new formulas the lessons of the old strategy must be unlearned in order that we may advance. The new conception of national armaments has never been put into words in any of our commitments but it is so implicit in their terms that it can be reduced almost to a formula. Every nation has not only the right but the obligation to its own people to maintain internal order. This obviously calls for an adequate military force for internal police work. Beyond and above this there is the obligation of each Government to its people to maintain a sufficient increment of military strength to defend the national territory against aggression and invasion. We, therefore, have this formula dividing our military forces into two parts. Beyond this reasonable supplement to the police force we have taken an implicit obligation to restrict ourselves. Our problem is, therefore, to establish by honest scrutiny and agreement the margin that now exists beyond what is essential for the maintenance of internal order and defense of our territories. Controlled by prudence but not by fear let us then proceed in a practical way to reduce armaments to the level to which we are all committed.

The American Delegation has listened with interest to the speeches of Sir John Simon and M. Tardieu and has been interested to note that each of them has begun this general discussion by concrete proposals, setting forth at the very beginning of the Conference the contributions which their Governments can make to the cause for which we are assembled. These proposals and any others which may be put before the Conference will be examined with an open mind by my Government and we feel that the best road to success lies in a similar statement from every delegation that has something positive to lay before us so that we may set out upon our labors with the benefit of all the practical proposals which it is possible to bring forward at the outset.

The American Delegation has not attempted to formulate and submit any comprehensive plan for overcoming all of the obstacles that exist in the way of achieving a general limitation and reduction in armaments. In the first place, we do not desire to raise new questions which will increase the points of difference and thus delay taking the forward steps which could otherwise be taken. In the second place, we do not believe the human mind is capable of so projecting itself into the future as to devise a plan which will adequately provide for all future developments and contingencies.

Since practically all the nations of the world have now pledged themselves not to wage aggressive war, we believe this conference should and can successfully devote itself to the abolition of weapons which are devoted primarily to aggressive war and we are prepared to give earnest and sympathetic consideration to any plans or proposals which seem to furnish a practicable and sound basis upon which we may effect a general limitation and reduction of armaments and establish a more healthy and peaceful state of affairs. It is my purpose today to lay before you certain points which the American Delegation advocates. Let me say that this list is not exclusive and contains merely some of the thoughts which we feel will carry on some of the purposes of the Conference.

1. The American Government advocates consideration of the draft convention³⁷ as containing the outlines for a convenient basis for discussion, while expressing its entire willingness to give full consideration to any supplementary proposals calculated to advance the end we all seek.

2. We suggest the possibility of prolonging the existing naval agreements concluded at Washington and London, and we advocate completing the latter as soon as possible by the adherence of France and Italy.

3. We advocate proportional reduction from the figures laid down in the Washington and London agreements on naval tonnage as soon as all parties to the Washington agreement have entered this frame work.

4. We advocate, as we long have done, the total abolition of submarines.

5. We will join in formulating the most effective measures to protect civilian population against aerial bombing.

6. We advocate the total abolition of lethal gases and bacteriological warfare.

7. We advocate, as I have already stated, the computation of the number of armed forces on the basis of the effectives necessary for the maintenance of internal order plus some suitable contingent for defense. The former are obviously impossible of reduction; the latter is a question of relativity.

8. We agree in advocating special restrictions for tanks and heavy mobile guns, in other words, for those arms of a peculiarly offensive character.

9. We are prepared to consider a limitation of expenditure on matériel as a complementary method to direct limitation, feeling that it may prove useful to prevent a qualitative race, if and when quantitative limitation has been effected.

I have already said these nine points are in no sense exclusive but I mention them merely in order to focus attention upon the methods in which we have the greatest hope of early practical realization.

The nations of the Western Hemisphere have long since prepared themselves for an international life in which the solution of difficulties will be sought by pacific means only. The problem of armaments is not of the Western Hemisphere. Of the five principal navies of the world only one belongs to an American nation and to this navy the principle of proportionate limitation and reduction has been comprehensively applied. Not a single American nation possesses an army which brings fear to its neighbors. For half a century no international war has occurred between the nations of our hemisphere. There is no surer evidence that self-restraint from over-armament safeguards peace. There is more security to be had in friendly cooperation between nations than in reliance on force. The best defense a nation can have is the goodwill of its neighbors. Nevertheless, and in spite of the fact that we ourselves have reduced the personnel of our land forces to a figure below the proportion reached by any great European power, we are here to cooperate to the utmost of our ability. We are prepared to discuss and to extend to other fields the principles of limitation and reduction of armaments already established and to examine and accept new principles if they contribute genuinely to the end defined. We join our sister nations with the deep conviction that the cause at issue must not be diverted by lack of frank discussion, by preoccupation with the difficulties in the foreground or by a weak surrender to the obvious impediments to progress. The Delegation of the United States is representing not only a government but a people and the mandate from both is in the same unmistakable terms, that decrease in arms is an essential not alone to economic recovery of the world but also to the preservation of the whole fabric of peace.

35. See Foreign Relations, 1922, vol. i, pp. 1 ff.
36. See ibid., 1930, vol. i, pp. 1 ff.
37. Documents of the Preparatory Commission, Series X, Annex 20 (C.P.D. 292–2), pp. 597–620.