500.A15A4 General Committee/207: Telegram
The Acting Chairman of the American Delegation (Gibson) to the Secretary of State
[Received March 17—10:45 a.m.]
570. My 569, March 17, noon. This document will come up for general discussion on March 23 and it is important that we be in possession [Page 55] of a general outline of your views as soon as possible in order that we may prepare such comment as we may be called on to make. It may well prove that the project will not go beyond a general discussion for the British tell me that they propose to make an effort to get it adopted article by article in the General Commission. On the other hand there will be a determined and probably successful effort on the part of other delegations to break the project up and send it to various committees for study with other plans before the Conference.
The present British attitude is that sooner than consent to this they would be disposed to take the stand that such action was equivalent to destroying the plan and that if there was no hope of reaching general agreement along the lines of the British proposal the Conference had better be wound up.
We are submitting in separate telegrams our detailed comments on the various sections of the British project in order that you may have them before you in formulating your views for our guidance.