500.A15A4 General Committee (Arms)/26

The Acting Secretary of State to the Secretary of War (Dern)

My Dear Mr. Secretary: I am in receipt of Mr. Woodring’s letter of July 23, 1934, in regard to the Draft Articles for the Regulation of the Trade in and Manufacture of Arms and Implements of War which were adopted by the Committee for the Regulation of the Trade in and Manufacture of Arms and Implements of War of the [Page 142] General Disarmament Conference on July 2, and I have given careful consideration to his comments upon those Articles.

In reply, I have to inform you that I concur in Mr. Woodring’s suggestion that Article G should be eliminated from the provisions relating to the supervision and control of the manufacture of and trade in arms, and that if that Article is to be retained, it should be incorporated in that portion of the Convention which pertains to European continental states only. I have instructed63 the American delegation in Geneva to urge this modification of the Draft.

The principle of permanent and automatic inspection by an international body, with a view to ensuring the carrying out of the provisions of the Disarmament Convention and, in particular, of those provisions dealing with the supervision and control of the manufacture of and trade in arms and with a view to allaying suspicion based upon false rumors of breaches of these provisions, has been definitely accepted by the President after full consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of such a system. The arguments adduced in the letter under acknowledgement were considered by the President before he made his decision on this point. His decision has been communicated directly by him to the representatives of other governments64 and as a result of the statements which he has made and of statements made by the American Delegation at Geneva under my instructions, this Government is so committed to the principle that there can now be no question of a change of position on that point. For your information, I may state that the President’s decision was based primarily upon the assumption that this Government would be placed at no disadvantage by such permanent and automatic inspection by an international body, when similar inspection was carried on in other countries and the results of such inspection was through publication made a matter of common knowledge. He felt also that supervision and control through international inspection would tend to allay unwarranted rumors of breaches of the provisions of the Convention, and that carried on as a matter of normal procedure such inspection would not result in the outbursts of chauvinistic emotion which would almost certainly result from inspection carried on as the result of a specific complaint from one of the signatory powers.

I am entirely in accord with the suggestion that the scope of the authority of any international body, charged with inspection under the provisions of the Convention relating to the manufacture of and trade in arms, should be clearly defined in the Convention itself, and I have so instructed the American Delegation in Geneva. My instructions [Page 143] have made clear that such inspection should relate to the concordance between licenses issued and the operations carried on thereunder, the accuracy of reports of arms manufacturers and importers and exporters of arms and the quantities of the various categories of arms, munitions, and implements of war manufactured, in process of manufacture, imported and exported, but that it should not extend to the methods and processes of manufacture.

Sincerely yours,

William Phillips
  1. Infra.
  2. See circular telegram of May 18, 1934, to the Ambassador in Great Britain, p. 427.