Office of the Historian

500.A15A4 General Committee/402: Telegram

The Secretary of State to the Chairman of the American Delegation (Davis)32

Washington, May 23, 1933—6 p.m.

337. Your 654, May 23, 1 p.m. While your statement in substance correctly sets forth our views, we feel that it should be rephrased in two places.

In your draft unilateral declaration, the portion of Alternative B undertaking to confer pursuant to machinery for general consultation which “may hereafter be constituted” is too much in the nature of signing a blank check and should be modified so as to limit our consultation to existing machinery.

The paragraph in your statement that our declaration “would be attached to our act of ratification of the convention” sets forth a procedure for tying up our contribution with the final instruments of the conference in more specific terms than seems desirable thus early. It should therefore be rephrased in more general terms.

Hull
  1. This telegram bears the notation: “Approved by President Roosevelt.”↩