500.A15A4 General Committee/213: Telegram
The Acting Chairman of the American Delegation (Gibson) to the Secretary of State
[Received March 17—5:13 p.m.]
575. My 569, March 17, noon. Comment on part II, section II—Material.
With reference to article 22 the instructions contained in your telegrams 211, September 29, 5 [4] p.m.,88 and 300, March 11, 2 p.m., are sufficient for our guidance. It should be noted that the acceptance of 105 millimeters in place of 155 millimeters will involve us in a very expensive rearmament program. Before accepting it we must satisfy ourselves that the indirect advantage flowing from a possible lessening of European tension makes it worth while.
The proposal by the British is an obvious attempt to give some measure of satisfaction to Germany’s claim to equality of treatment in fixing the limit of 105 millimeters imposed on Germany. You will be in a position to judge as to whether the political advantages of such action are sufficient to counterbalance such technical difficulties as the proposal may offer.
With reference to your 211 the limitation of coast defense guns to 406 millimeters (16 inches) is an attempt to hook up coast defense with present naval armament limitations. We are in entire agreement as to the soundness of the theory that purely defensive guns on fixed mounts should not be subjected to limitation of any kind and further that there is not necessarily any relation between them and the caliber of naval guns which may be brought to bear against either. However, whatever the pure logic of the situation may be this problem presents itself in a practical aspect for countries of the European Continent. [Page 58] Their distances from each other are so short that the difference in gun caliber can be made the difference between defense and offense. They are frankly afraid of each other’s intentions and under guise of a relation between land and naval guns wish to limit the former. None of the powers of Europe have any real concern with the caliber of our guns but they are pressing for universal application of a rule in order to preclude other countries in Europe from claiming exceptional treatment under a precedent created for the United States. If therefore there appears to be a possibility of general agreement we feel that careful thought should be given at home to whether we should risk jeopardizing such agreement on theoretical grounds however sound—unless of course our own Government proposes to build guns of larger caliber in the near future. It should also be remembered that we have accepted article 2 section II of the July 23 resolution on this subject.
Article 20. No comment.
Article 21. We are clearly on record as advocating the total abolition of tanks and we feel that we should continue to express preference for abolition but if this prove unfeasible we should scrutinize the maximum tonnage limit set in the British proposal and you may wish to consider whether or not our development of the Christy tank demands that this limit be raised to 18½ tons.
We shall probably not have to take the initiative in this matter as other powers will probably accept the burden of raising the limit.
Article 22. Attention is invited to the fact that no provision is made for conversion of mobile guns to fixed and that the destruction envisaged demands an expensive replacement program. Unless you see reason for us to act otherwise we propose to press for the right of conversion into fixed mountings, coupled with destruction of mobile mountings, of all guns above 155 millimeter along the lines already put forward by us in the Hoover proposal. The last sentence of this article is so loosely worded that it might well be interpreted to call for the destruction of one gun above 105 millimeter for every new gun of, or below, 105 millimeters.
Attention is invited to the fact that no measures of quantitative limitation in land material are found in the British proposal. In the absence of numerical limitation of guns and tanks and other material there is always the danger that the chief result of the provisions adopted would be to start a new race in armaments within qualitative limits and thereby defeat the very purpose of the treaty, not only as regards reduction of armaments but also reduction of financial burdens.