724.3415/3757: Telegram
The Consul at Geneva (Gilbert) to the Secretary of State
[Received 11:55 a.m.]
100. My 98, May 28, 2 p.m. [noon?] paragraph 3. Walters73 informs me in confidence that it is felt after giving the matter consideration that Italy cannot be asked to eliminate Japan and Soviet Russia from the states on which it makes its action on the Chaco arms embargo contingent inasmuch as Italy could logically defend her policy on the basis of both being arms producing countries.
He stated that a part of the strategy of the arms embargo proposal was however to employ it as pressure to induce Bolivia and Paraguay to accept the League Commission’s report. It has been hoped that the making public of the progressive acceptance by states of the proposal would augment that pressure; thus by the same token the announcement of such a reply as Italy’s introducing the problem of obtaining the presumably difficult acquiescence of Russia and Japan would have [Page 248] the opposite effect. The Secretariat’s present endeavor is therefore to induce Italy to reword her reply in a manner which while retaining the same purport would not specifically mention Russia and Japan, such a reply to be made public and communications presumably eventually to be furnished Moscow and Tokyo (Consulate’s 98, May 28, noon, paragraph 3) could be withheld for a while. Aloisi is now in telephonic communication with Rome on this subject.
This would all seem to me to be difficult of adjustment and I feel that Italy’s intent will soon become common knowledge. In any event Walters requests that the existence and nature of the Italian reply be kept for the present strictly confidential.
- Francis P. Walters, Under Secretary General of the League in charge of the Political Section.↩