500.A15A/107a: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Great Britain (Bingham)
259. The American press has been filled for the last 2 or 3 days with information concerning the preliminary conversations which is obviously [Page 269] inspired from British sources. While to be sure many specific details have not been given, we have learned every day from the press in advance of your telegrams the nature of the discussions together with a full presentation of the British point of view. The general tenor of the stories coming out of London is to the effect that the British are going to enter the new Conference, if held, in the same spirit in which they went to Geneva in 192790 but that this time they think the United States will be with them. I hope you will informally call to the attention of the British that they are in effect fighting their battle for increased tonnage in the press; that thus far in spite of considerable pressure, we have lived up to the spirit of the understanding that there would be a minimum of publicity but that the pressure for authoritative American guidance as to our reaction to the British position is growing in direct proportion to the press despatches coming out of England.
Since dictating the foregoing, the following Associated Press despatch has been published:
“Negotiations between United States and British experts here were stopped temporarily today on receipt of instructions from Washington. The nature of the note received by the American Delegation was not disclosed. It was indicated, however, that as a result of new directions from the United States there will be no more sessions of the Bilateral Conference until Monday.”91
We are at a loss to understand the basis of this despatch.
- Three-Power Conference for the Limitation of Naval Armament, Geneva, June 20–August 4, 1927; for correspondence, see Foreign Relations, 1927, vol. i, pp. 1 ff.↩
- June 25.↩