793.94/5603a: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Japan (Grew)
173. On October 26 I made an address at Pittsburgh before the Council of the Methodist Episcopal Church for the Pittsburgh area on the subject “The Work of the United States Government in the Promotion of Peace during the Past Three Years”. In the address I mentioned five lines along which the present administration has been working and referred to what the administration has accomplished in each line. The fifth line to which I referred related to the great multilateral treaties which have been adopted since the World War in the hope of minimizing and preventing all war in the future. In this part of my address I mentioned the Kellogg-Briand Pact, including a very brief reference to the situation in the Far East. Less than one page of the eight typewritten pages of the address contained any reference to that situation which was referred to as follows:
“These views (in regard to the Kellogg-Briand Pact) have been expressed by our Government in step after step relating to the recent troubles in the Far East; and the policy of this Government, announced in its note of January 7th last, not to recognize the fruits of aggression obtained by a violation of the Treaty, has been formally approved in a resolution of the Assembly of the League of Nations as the proper policy for all the nations which are members of that League. It has also more recently been adopted by all of the 19 neutral nations of this hemisphere in respect to the quarrel between Bolivia and Paraguay2 as the proper policy for the nations of these continents. And, so far as formal and general adoption can thus make it, it has become a recognized principle of international law and practice.
The attitude which your Government has taken towards the Kellogg Pact in these proceedings has had at least two other results. In the first place, it has tended to strengthen the sanctity of treaties. If, when the trouble broke out in Manchuria, we had turned away our heads, irreparable damage would have been done not only to the standing of the Kellogg Pact but also to every other one of the great peace treaties of the world. But when the United States showed that the sanctity of the Kellogg Treaty was of keen interest and importance to us, and when our view was followed by the rest of the world, a new breath of vigor and of life was infused into the vitality of all such treaties and their obligations.
In the second place, the action which has taken place among the nations of the world in respect to the troubles in Manchuria has marked a new milestone in the development of actual international cooperation when war threatens the world. In the new international [Page 315] world created by these treaties, the basic idea is that war anywhere is of concern everywhere. The necessary resulting process of this has been shown by the events of the past year to be a consultation between the nations of the world and a call to public opinion to exert itself. The nations of the world have consulted together as to the threat to peace even in far-off Manchuria. They have consulted as to the means to avoid the breach or to moderate and appease it. As a part of this effort to ascertain the true facts involved in the fog of mutual recrimination and intelligently to inform public opinion, a neutral investigating commission has, with the consent of both the disputant nations, been sent to the seat of the quarrel and is about to present the result of its findings in [to] the nations members of the League of Nations assembled in Geneva”.
A copy of the full text of the address is being sent you by mail.
- For correspondence on this subject, see vol. v, pp. 8 ff.↩