500.A4B/609

Memorandum by the Chief of the Division of Western European Affairs ( Moffat ) to the Secretary of State

The French Ambassador49 called this morning to tell us confidentially the tenor of the French reply50 to the Japanese inquiry as to whether France would join Japan in denouncing the Washington Treaty.

[Page 407]

The French note, as he explained it to me, pointed out that no one ignored the fact that France did not believe in the ratio system and that in 1930 she had refused to apply it to auxiliary types of vessels by signing the London Treaty;51 further, certain of the new methods in the limitation of naval strength advocated by Japan (presumably global tonnage and qualitative limitation) met the preoccupation of the French Navy over the re-armament of Germany.

Had the French been requested to join with all other signatories to the Washington Treaty in agreeing to let the Treaty lapse at the end of 1936, the French Government would have expressed its willingness. The Japanese proposal, however, limited its action by asking for denunciation by certain signatories only. If the French Government agreed to this, without having had an opportunity to explain its thesis in toto, it might be felt that it had accepted the Japanese position, many portions of which were of interest to Japan alone. In the circumstances, the French Government feeling that action on its part in denouncing the Washington Treaty would give rise to misunderstanding must decline the Japanese proposal.

Mr. Laboulaye said that the French Ambassador in Japan had been instructed orally to express the hope that the coming conference would at least succeed in bringing about qualitative limitation, even if it were not possible to agree upon quantitative.

Mr. Laboulaye was instructed to add for our benefit that whereas naval rearmament in Germany had raised new questions as to the basis on which the Washington Naval Treaty had been negotiated, none the less the French Government had wished to refrain from making any gesture which would have diminished the chances of success in the preliminary talks in London however slight they might be.

The Ambassador asked me to add that he would have conveyed the foregoing to you personally if he had not desired to spare your voice. He also requested that we consider his step as strictly confidential and that no mention be made to the press.

Pierrepont Moffat
  1. André de Laboulaye.
  2. See telegram No. 267, December 3, from the Ambassador in Japan, supra.
  3. Treaty for the Limitation and Reduction of Naval Armament, signed at London, April 22, 1930; for text, see Foreign Relations, 1930, vol. i, p. 107. For correspondence covering Anglo-French controversy over fleet figures, see ibid., pp. 29, 6263, 7579, 84, 103106.