Office of the Historian

500.A15A4 Land Armaments/259: Telegram

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

Geneva, February 7, 1933—5 p.m.
[Received February 7—12:30 p.m.]

528. Your 234, November 8, 3 p.m.18 Committee of Bureau is drafting articles to give effect to provisions of Document Bureau 41. Article 1 in tentative form reads “Contracting parties declare to be prohibited the use of chemical, et cetera, weapons as against any state whether or not a party to the present convention, and in any war whatever its character”.

The tentative draft above provides for a prohibition in place of a universal renunciation of the use. It appears that a renunciation [Page 10] is self-executing while a prohibition inevitably carries with it the idea of sanctions. As a matter of policy should we oppose the principle of a prohibition and fight for a universal renunciation?

Gibson
  1. Foreign Relations, 1932, vol. i, p. 366.↩