500.A15A/322: Telegram
The Acting Secretary of State to the Chairman of the American Delegation (Davis)
50. Your 68, December 11, 2 p.m.
- (1)
- Accepting at its face value the information given Atherton by his informant, it would seem as though we were shortly to be confronted with a new and radical change in British tactics.
- (2)
- Is not the clue to this change to be found in Selden’s
dispatch in this morning’s New York
Times:37
“There is one more maneuver the British may try, temporarily to break the deadlock in such a way that it will not seem to be a deadlock. That would be to present another proposal that would require so much consideration that the Americans and Japanese would be justified in asking a long recess, which would enable them to go home. The trouble with that is that the Japanese do not yet want to leave London. Neither can anybody concerned imagine what sort of proposal Britain could produce that would meet the approval of both Japanese and Americans or conform to Britain’s own desire to maintain the Washington treaty. But the British are fertile in suggestions.”
- (3)
- As phrased by Atherton’s informant, it would seem that the plan now being discussed between the British and the Japanese for a “face saving formula” is not consistent with the assurances given you by Simon and Craigie and reported in your telegrams 24 and 2638 to the effect that an agreement on building programs to be acceptable must be contractual in form.
- (4)
- We are not prepared at the present time to discuss our 1937–1942 naval program as our needs being relative we should first have to know the Japanese program.
- (5)
- We attach particular importance to your avoiding any discussion at the present time of technical differences of opinion between the British and ourselves. This would introduce a new element into the conversations just before Japanese denunciation and would obscure the fact that Japan was on the point of rejecting the very principles on which the treaty of 1922 was based.