500.A15A4/1507: Telegram
The Chargé in Germany (Gordon) to the Secretary of State
[Received October 8—11:45 a.m.]
203. I was asked to call at Foreign Office this morning and given a copy of the English invitation of October 3 to Germany to attend a four-power conference in London on October 11 and the German answer of yesterday. The latter is brief and couched in conciliatory terms.
A substantial summary thereof is as follows:
The German Government is at all times ready for a frank exchange of views with the Governments mentioned in the invitation concerning a beneficial and equitable solution of the disarmament question. In this connection Germany cites the passage of the final Lausanne protocol reading, “to create a new order permitting the establishment and development of confidence between the nations in a mutual spirit of reconciliation, collaboration and justice”,78 and hopes that if the conference is animated by this motive a solution will be found enabling Germany to resume participation in the Disarmament Conference whose successful termination she desires.
“She cannot conceal, however, that a discussion [?] of the French and English notes of September 11 and 18 would hardly lead to the goal of an agreement over the questions at issue”. In view of the fact that the League Assembly is still in session the German Government would prefer a later date than the one proposed by the British Government. The British Chargé d’Affaires has informed me that in delivering the written invitation of October 3 which only mentioned the “French, German, Italian and United Kingdom Governments” he said to Bülow that he hoped the United States would participate in the conference.
Dieckhoff further explained to me this morning that in stating its willingness for an exchange of views with the Governments mentioned in the British invitation the German Government did not mean to imply that it would object to the participation of other powers. This applied of course to us and might equally be so if France should suggest the addition of one or two powers; if, however, the conference were to lose the particular character which the German Government understood it was to have and there should be an attempt to make of it in effect a disarmament conference in miniature that would be an entirely different matter.
[Page 461]Dieckhoff further said that by the same token Germany would not necessarily object if the French should persuade the other powers concerned to hold the conference in Geneva rather than in London though the latter city would be preferable.
The text of the British invitation has not been published here nor will the German answer be, the Government confining itself to giving out a communiqué today summarizing its answer.
I understand from other sources as well as from what I gathered in my conversation with Dieckhoff that if the conference is held the intention of the German Government is to put forward immediately its equality claim and to demand a show-down on the question whether the convention to be eventually reached by the Disarmament Conference will replace article 5 [part V] of the Versailles Treaty.
- For complete text, see Great Britain, Cmd. 4126, Miscellaneous No. 7 (1932): Final Act of the Lausanne Conference, Lausanne, July 9, 1932, p. 5.↩