500.A15A4 Steering Committee/340: Telegram
The American Delegate ( Wilson ) to the Acting Secretary of State
[Received July 25—2:40 p.m.]
713. Through the helpful cooperation of De Wolf,98 who accompanied Henderson and Aghnides99 on their recent journey through [Page 205] Europe to discuss disarmament, I am forwarding a mail report1 of Henderson’s conversations and future plans for the Conference.
Nothing of a striking nature was accomplished by Henderson nor any point developed to a place where the cooperation of other powers was desirable. His conversations seem to reveal a continued stiff attitude on the part of the French respecting material and a trial period for any disarmament treaty while the Germans seem to have moved appreciably toward meeting French desires, being willing to accept the Soviet definition of the aggressor, the fullest sort of control and supervised publicity of expenditures in addition to previous compromise agreements respecting transformation of the Reichswehr. Apparently the Germans while not pronouncing an ultimatum or fixing a time limit gave Henderson definitely to understand that Germany would feel free to rearm and would so act should a disarmament treaty not be achieved.
Henderson has now left for London where he will discuss his conversations with the British Government’s disarmament committee and then formulate certain suggestions in relation to the British plan which he believes will be helpful toward arriving at an agreement. He will lay these suggestions before the Bureau to be summoned about September 20th at Geneva and will request it to name a drafting committee to put the suggestions into treaty form.
Thus it appears that conversations and Bureau work in September may have a definite objective and be of considerable importance.