500.A15A4 General Committee/316: Telegram
The Chairman of the American Delegation (Davis) to the Secretary of State
[Received April 28—9:40 p.m.]
619. Following my declaration (see my 617, April 28, 7 p.m.)63 Nadolny64 motivated certain amendments which he had made to the chapter on effectives (section 1, part 2). His amendments included bringing up the question of trained reserves, eliminating most if not all of the German police from inclusion in effectives, and what amounted to a flat refusal to reconstitute the Reichswehr into a conscript army of short term. His speech was unfortunate in that it raked up all the old arguments as to the failure of the Allies to live up to the obligation to disarm contained in the Treaty of Versailles.65
[Page 122]Massigli66 replied in a spirited speech in which he closed by indicating that if the Germans maintained amendments which, according to Massigli, constituted rearmament, there was no use of further discussing the matter.
Eden67 in a temperate manner endeavored to demonstrate that the German points were not well taken and closed with an appeal to Nadolny not to consider his amendments as Germany’s last word on the subject. Nadolny then replied in an extempore argument in a manner which left open the possibility of negotiating on these points.
The situation seemed to be ominous and I therefore thought it well to intervene. After stating that I did not wish to enter into a discussion of the effectives question I observed that my understanding was that the British plan68 in this regard resulted from agreement on this subject in the effectives committee; that Germany not being present, it was perfectly proper for her to present her case; that I was not concerned about this but that I was concerned with regard to the tone of the discussions today. I then described the situation with which the world is now faced and continued that under the leadership of the President of the United States a very helpful effort was being made to grapple with these problems. If we could proceed in the same spirit here it would be well and we should thus try to rise above petty details and contentious questions. The origin of our trouble was excessive nationalism. We have been too accustomed thus to approach our problems with the resulting restricted point of view.
I am hopeful that my remarks made a helpful impression. Henderson,69 in closing the discussion, supported the appeal which I had made.
- Ante, p. 118.↩
- Head of the German delegation to the General Commission.↩
- Treaties, Conventions, etc., Between the United States of America and Other Powers, 1910–1923 (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1923), vol. iii, p. 3329.↩
- Member of the French delegation; Assistant Director of Political Affairs, French Foreign Office.↩
- Member of the British delegation to the General Commission; Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.↩
- See telegram No. 569, March 17, noon, from the Acting Chairman of the American delegation, p. 43.↩
- President of the Conference.↩