811.113 Senate Investigation/222
Memorandum by Mr. Joseph G. Green of the Division of Western European Affairs
At the request of Senator Nye, Chairman of the Special Committee of the Senate Investigating the Munitions Industry, I attended an executive session of the Committee yesterday afternoon. Mr. deWolf of TD2 accompanied me. There were present all of the members of the Committee—except Senators Vandenberg and Clark—and Mr. Raushenbush, Secretary of the Committee, and Mr. Hiss, one of its investigators.
I stated to the Committee that the Secretary had authorized me to comply with its request that I make a study of the possibilities of enacting at this time legislation such as would be required if a Convention were negotiated, based upon the Draft Articles for the Regulation and Control of the Manufacture of and Trade in Arms and the Establishment of a Permanent Disarmament Commission3 now under discussion in Geneva.4 I stated that Mr. deWolf, whose knowledge and experience particularly qualified him for work of this kind, had assisted me. I then outlined briefly the memorandum on the constitutional aspects of the question which had been prepared by Mr. deWolf, and explained in general terms the nature of the legislation which we had drafted for the Committee’s consideration.
In response to a question of Senator Nye, I made it clear that we did not desire that the fact that we had collaborated with the Committee in the preparation of legislation should be made public.
The members of the Committee listened attentively to my exposition and afterwards asked a number of questions, of which the most important dealt with the constitutionality of the proposed legislation, the relation between the Arms Traffic Convention of 19255 and the Convention now under negotiation at Geneva, the various arguments which had been adduced in favor of and in opposition to the Arms Embargo Resolution,6 and the effect of existing treaties upon possible restrictions on the export of arms and munitions from the United States.
At the end of the meeting, which lasted somewhat over an hour, the Chairman said that he would distribute copies of the memorandum and of the draft of legislation to the members of the Committee for [Page 318] their consideration, and that within a few days, he would request us to attend another meeting of the Committee, in order to answer any questions which might arise as a result of their considerations of these documents.
Mr. deWolf and I left with the impression that the Committee was disposed to consider sympathetically the draft legislation which we had submitted.
- Treaty Division.↩
- For text of the draft articles, see Department of State, Press Releases, December 22, 1934, p. 391.↩
- For correspondence concerning the Disarmament Conference, see pp. 1 ff↩
- Foreign Relations, 1925, vol. i, p. 61.↩
- For correspondence, see ibid., 1933, vol. i, pp. 356 ff; for text of the resolution, see ibid., p. 367.↩