Foreign Relations of the United States Diplomatic Papers, 1934, General, the British Commonwealth, Volume I

500.A15A4 General Committee/930: Telegram

The Chairman of the American Delegation (Davis) to the Secretary of State

Geneva, May 29, 1934—midnight.
[Received May 29—10 p.m.]

852. Henderson opened the meeting of the General Commission this afternoon with a summary⁵⁹ of decisions already taken by the Conference which could not be ignored in determining its future work.

2. Following my speech⁶⁰ which was well received Litvinoff gave a long declaration of Soviet policy.⁶¹ In explaining why no solution had been found for the problem of disarmament he reverted to the original Soviet proposal for total disarmament as the only possible measure of securing this end, intimating that many of the plans put forward had been actuated by selfish motives, and was particularly severe in his arraignment of German responsibility. In view of the visible failure of disarmament he proposed as a means of guaranteeing peace the termination of disarmament conference as such and its transformation into a “permanent peace conference”. In his plan the functions of the permanent peace conference would include the consideration of (a) the Soviet definition of aggression, (b) sanctions of various kinds of aggressor which might be established in a graduated scale without pursuing them to “the point of military measures not acceptable to all states,” (c) separate regional pacts of mutual assistance which would admit all interested in the security of the particular regions concerned. Disarmament would not be excluded from the program of the work of this conference since everything which bears on a system of guarantees of peace must receive careful attention. The conference would sit as a permanent body for the prevention of war.

3. In answer to those who might suggest that the League itself was the appropriate body for this task he thought that the League had a multitude of tasks, was too “straightly bound by its statutes,” was created at a time when the war peril seemed to be eliminated for many years, and not sufficiently responsive to the needs of the moment on account of its too rigid application of Articles XII, XV, and XVI. The framework of the League was in his opinion inadequate to deal with major problems as was proven by the very fact of the summoning of the Disarmament Conference.

4. Simon, Barthou, and Beck⁶² are scheduled to speak tomorrow.

Davis

59. Minutes of the General Commission, vol. iii, pp. 652–655.
60. Infra.
61. Minutes of the General Commission, vol. iii, pp. 657–661.
62. Joseph Beck, Polish Minister for Foreign Affairs; Chairman of the Polish delegation to the Disarmament Conference.