500.A14/695
The Persian Minister (Djalal) to the Secretary of State
Your Excellency: I have the honor to acknowledge your note of the 24th instant, in answer to the memorandum which I sent to you on August 11, containing the purport of the conversation that I had with Your Excellency, explaining that it would be contrary to the sense of justice and equality that has always inspired the policy of the United States Government in dealing with the small nations, if the Geneva Convention were ratified without reservation. I regret to say that Your Excellency, in your note, takes exception “to the general tone and tenor, and misleading statements and misstatements in my note.”
The contents of my memorandum were divided into two parts. The first explained how the Convention was designed with the purport of encroaching on the Persian National and historical sovereign rights in the Persian Gulf, and to humiliate Persia in the eyes of the world by placing the Persian Gulf on an equal footing with the Red Sea, while that humiliation is spared to the African states such as Egypt, Libya, Algeria, etc.
The second part was the praise of the United States Government, (especially under the presidency of His Excellency Mr. Roosevelt,) which has shown to the world its just policy in dealing with the small nations by renouncing its treaty rights in favor of Cuba, Haiti, etc.
Your Excellency’s remark, I think cannot be applied to the second part of my memorandum, and is applicable only to the first part. I quite admit that my general tone in explaining to you the injustice [Page 483] to which Persia has been subjected, was very plain and very outspoken. However, I regret that my complaints and general tone in demonstrating the aggressive designs of other powers against Persian national rights, should meet with your disapproval, as my intention was only to evoke further the sense of justice of your Government.
In my letter to Mr. Phillips I simply mentioned that if Your Excellency does not recollect having made the statement, “to proceed with drafting another convention with reference to the arms traffic, favorable to Persia,” I am ready to cross it out and not make it a subject of dispute. While the paragraph is more or less of the purport of Mr. Phillips’ own wording in his letter of May 29, to the effect that, “The treaty which we have in mind would consist in part of a revision of the Arms Traffic Convention of 1925, and we hope that in carrying out that revision, a solution will be found which will be entirely acceptable to your Government,” and also Your Excellency’s reference in your note of May 16 to the discussion of the revision of the Convention of 1925 in Geneva. In any case, my record of the purport of the conversation was open to correction if desired.
The only other part of my memorandum which might be the object of the word, “misleading” or “misstatement,” is my statement that the League of Nations Convention (in which the United States representative participated) approved of the revision of the Convention of 1925, recognizing the justice of the Persian representative’s complaint and explanations. In support of this, as I have mentioned in my letter to Mr. Phillips, I have telegraphed to the Persian Legation in Geneva to forward to me all the necessary official documents which I hope will soon be here for Your Excellency’s perusal.
I am sure Your Excellency will agree that there could not be any intention of misleading in the quotation of our official reports which, unfortunately, do not correspond to those of the United States representative.
Accept [etc.]