500.A15A4/1869: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Chargé in France (Marriner)
138. Personal for Norman Davis. Your 216, May 15, 1 p.m.,92 arrived too late to serve as a basis for the President’s statement cabled [Page 146] you in our 135.93 The President had for several days felt the need of taking a new initiative in connection with both the Economic and Disarmament Conferences and developments over the weekend made it imperative for him to take action with the least possible delay. He was gratified, however, to find that despite certain differences in emphasis, the ideas he developed proved to be in essential harmony with those you submitted. The President considered it advisable under existing circumstances to cast his proposal in general terms applicable to the entire world rather than to limit his message primarily to the European situation or to Germany in particular. Within this universal framework, however, he included a new approach by offering in substance a concrete definition of aggression, definitely linking it up with the faithful execution of disarmament obligations. This, of course, does not signify a recession on our part from the position already developed in connection with security, consultation, and non-insistence on neutral rights, but on the other hand actually strengthens it.
Your draft statement in many respects supplements the President’s message and if occasion demands you may make use of appropriate passages with a view to strengthening the President’s initiative, dependent, of course, on world reaction to the message and on developments in the Reichstag tomorrow.