500.A15A4 General Committee/438: Telegram
The Acting Secretary of State to the Chairman of the American Delegation (Davis)47
348. Your 677, May 30, 10 p.m.
- 1.
- We agree as to the wisdom of coordinating the non-aggression and no-force pacts, and should be glad to have you submit a text for approval.
- 2.
- The President’s non-aggression proposal was, of course, never intended to handicap action genuinely designed for the immediate protection of human life. We would be very reluctant, however, to see the pact qualified by any specific exception relating to protection of citizens or diluted by vaguer phraseology, since an agreement thus modified might easily be abused as a shield for actual aggression. We shall not, of course, insist on the exact phraseology used in the President’s message but hope you will succeed in arriving at a text which does not materially depart from it in substance.
- 3.
- As we see the problem of the definition of aggression, it divides itself into three distinct aspects: (a) the definition of aggression in connection with the continental mutual assistance pacts; (b) the definition [Page 181] of aggression applicable to part I of the British plan; (c) the definition of aggression applicable under our unilateral declaration.
The first aspect is no concern of ours. As regards part I, we have no direct interest inasmuch as we shall not in any event be a party thereto. Our only concern is that the substance of part I should be sufficiently close to what we ourselves are prepared unilaterally to undertake that a smooth correlation of our action with that taken by other powers will be possible. From this point of view, we should naturally prefer the inclusion in part I of a definition—if any—which would, on the one hand, be flexible and general and, on the other, serve primarily as a guide rather than as a definite rule. Such a criterion of aggression is, in our opinion, already embodied in the President’s non-aggression proposal.
As regards our own action, we doubt whether it would be necessary to include in our unilateral declaration any specific criterion of aggression. Such a criterion would, as already stated, appear in the non-aggression pact. In using our independent judgment under the unilateral declaration, we would, of course, as a party to the pact, be bound to take its terms into account. This could be accomplished by including in our declaration some reference to the non-aggression pact, as, for instance, by recognizing, in the preamble, that any breach or threat of breach of the Pact of Paris or of the Pact of Non-Aggression is a matter of concern to all the signatories thereto. If you do not feel that this would solve the difficulties, please be quite frank in so telling us.
- This telegram bears the notation: “Approved by the President.”↩