Office of the Historian

500.A15A4 Plenary Sessions/9: Telegram

The Acting Chairman of the American Delegation (Gibson) to the Secretary of State

Geneva, February 11, 1932—2 p.m.
[Received February 11—10:45 a.m.]

22. Litvinoff’s speech this morning consisted of a plea for the support of the Russian proposal for total general disarmament but [Page 33] added that his delegation had no illusions on the fate reserved for such a proposal and therefore it would be ready to discuss any proposal tending toward a reduction of armaments and he recalled that during the Preparatory Commission the Soviet delegation had proposed the absolute prohibition of the most aggressive categories of armament,39 namely:

(1)
—tanks and heavy artillery
(2)
—naval vessels above 10,000 tons
(3)
—naval gun mountings above twelve inches
(4)
—airplane carriers
(5)
—military dirigibles
(6)
—airplane bombers as well as all stores of aviation bombs and other destructive agents carried in airplanes.
(7)
—all the apparatus of chemical, bacteriological and incendiary warfare.

He pointed out that all these proposals remained in full force and that he would be glad to go beyond them.

He likewise delivered a detailed criticism of the French plan which he said had been absolutely rejected 13 years ago at the time of the foundation of the League of Nations. He felt that the creation of a new army would only add complexity to the situation and would be ineffective to stop wars of aggression since it would merely mean that in the calculations of an aggressor state it would have to assume that the state which [it?] proposed to attack would have as an ally the League army, whose strength it could calculate from the undertakings necessary to put the French plan into effect.

Gibson
  1. For text of the draft convention submitted by the Soviet delegation, see Annex 5 to minutes of the fifth session (1928), League of Nations, Documents of the Preparatory Commission, Series VI (C.165.M.50.1928.IX), p. 347; for correspondence, see Foreign Relations, 1928, vol. i, pp. 240–256 passim; ibid., 1929, vol. i, pp. 71–72 and 87.↩