Office of the Historian

500.A16/174a: Telegram

The Acting Secretary of State to the American Delegate to the Bureau of the Disarmament Conference (Wilson)

Washington, December 29, 1932—5 p.m.

274. Department’s 257, December 3, 1 p.m.1 In view of problems arising from the recent sale of arms and munitions of war by American manufacturers to certain Latin American Governments the Secretary has decided to urge Senator Borah to press for immediate favorable action on the Arms Traffic Convention of 1925.2

It would not appear that the ratification of that Convention by the United States would interfere with the plans recently under discussion at Geneva to provide for more effective supervision and control of the international traffic in arms. Such ratification would be without prejudice to eventual agreement by the United States to similar or more far-reaching provisions to be embodied in the Disarmament Convention.3

Castle
  1. Not printed.↩
  2. Foreign Relations, 1925, vol. i, p. 61.↩
  3. For correspondence concerning the Conference for the Reduction and Limitation of Armaments, see pp. 1 ff.↩