500.A15A4 General Committee (Arms)/52: Telegram
The American Delegate (Wilson) to the Secretary of State
[Received November 19—10 a.m.]
946. I desire to submit to you a question the answer to which I shall request when I telephone5 this afternoon at 6 p.m. as stated in my telegram 944, November 18, 7 p.m.
I have just seen Henderson. He tells me that he had considerable difficulty with the French in accepting his letter based upon the meeting in London. Furthermore, when he spoke to the French Saturday [Page 184] regarding the idea of a single instrument for traffic in arms and Permanent Disarmament Commission (see Davis’ 39, November 15, 7 p.m.) the French insisted emphatically that publicity of budgetary expenditure must be included in the treaty.
Henderson therefore feels strongly and stated emphatically that while he would be happy to back us in insistence upon a single treaty it would be only if we included budgetary publicity. If we insist upon singling out only the two subjects in which we are particularly interested, namely, manufacture of and trade in arms and setting up the Permanent Disarmament Commission then he can not back us. He is convinced that our only hope of getting through the program of work is to present a united front in the face of the probable Russian attempts to kill the Conference and set up a permanent peace commission which it is generally felt will take place at the meeting Tuesday.
I have in mind your telegram 19 to Davis in London and share the reluctance to include budgetary publicity in a treaty with the other two subjects. I feel, however, that unless we are profoundly opposed to budgetary publicity we should accept Henderson’s compromise and accept it gracefully in giving Henderson full backing in tomorrow’s meeting.
For the sake of clarity I venture to summarize as follows: The plan would be that the three committees would undertake their separate studies for the purpose of finding such modifications in existing texts as would fit an immediate realization of a single treaty; that the correlation of these three texts into one treaty would be the work of the Bureau in a subsequent meeting.
If you approve of our submitting a text Tuesday as requested in my 942, November 13, 8 p.m.,7 the procedure I have in mind after this conversation with Henderson is that we should submit this text as two-thirds of the treaty. We should state that in our opinion budgetary publicity is a subject which has not advanced to the same stage as the other two subjects that, however, we are agreeable to including a chapter thereon in the treaty.
Repeated to London for Davis.