Foreign Relations of the United States Diplomatic Papers, 1935, General, The Near East and Africa, Volume I

500.A15A5/484

The Japanese Embassy in the United Kingdom to the British Foreign Office ⁶³

undated

Aide-Mémoire

It appears from the Memorandum of the 2nd August, 1935 presented by the British Government to the French and Italian Governments regarding the limitation of naval armaments that it is the intention of the British Government to prepare the way for the naval limitation conference, stipulated by the Washington Treaty, with a view to reaching agreement primarily on qualitative limits and preferably also on a system of declaring building programmes. The Japanese Government, in order to avoid any possible misunderstanding with regard to their intentions, wish to take this opportunity to call the attention of the British Government to the following two points:—

1) The Japanese Government regard it of importance to reach agreement on general naval limitation comprising both qualitative and quantitative limits, and are unable to agree to consider only qualitative limits apart from quantitative limits.

(2) The Japanese Delegates pointed out during the preliminary talks last year that such a proposal as was then outlined by the British Delegates of declaring building programmes was unacceptable to the Japanese Government, there being a distance in contents from their claims.⁶⁴

63. Copy transmitted to the Department by the Chargé in the United Kingdom in his despatch No. 1663, September 3; received September 10.
64. In paragraph (2) of the original aide-mémoire the word “proposal” read “system”, and the phrase “there being a distance in contents from their claims” read “being different from their claim”.