500.A15A4 General Committee (Arms)/257
The Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Bingham) to the Secretary of State
[Received April 17.]
Sir: I have the honor to refer to the Embassy’s confidential telegram, No. 122, March 20, 12 noon, giving a summary of a conversation with Mr. Anthony Eden in regard to the British position on inspection. In the House of Lords on April 3 Viscount Cecil asked whether it was true that the representative of the British Government on the Sub-Committee at Geneva dealing with the manufacture of and trade in arms had refused to agree to international control on the spot; whether any other Power had supported the British Government in taking that point of view and, if so, which; and what was the reason [Page 45] for which the British Government was taking that attitude which, in the view of several other Governments, was fatal to the success of the negotiations. He deplored the fact that on this important matter the House was not fully informed, and moved for Papers.
Earl Stanhope, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs and representative of the British Government on the Sub-Committee at Geneva, replied that he was not at liberty to state the nature of proceedings in the Sub-Committees at Geneva for the reason that those Committees are sitting in private and that until their reports are made public he could not properly transgress the rules by revealing the nature of their deliberations. He said that he was not going to deny or affirm the suggestions made by the Press as to the British attitude, but that he could, of course, say that the British delegation was taking the same general line in regard to these matters that he announced in the open sessions at Geneva last month. He said that the proposals submitted to the Committee by the United States in their draft protocol were based on two principles: (1) national control of arms manufacture and trade on internationally agreed lines, and (2) international publicity and supervision to assure that the objects of the Convention are attained. He said the system proposed by the United States seemed to the British unnecessarily complex for the object in view. He said that all were agreed that the control both of manufacture and trade should be of a national and not an international character, and therefore that when it was proposed in the United States draft that there should be set up international committees, who should be in every country, to supervise this control and to supervise the returns, he felt that such a system was unnecessary. They proposed instead that it would be sufficient if the returns which were given on a national basis were to be supervised at Geneva by the Permanent Disarmament Commission which it had been proposed to set up there.
On returning to Lord Cecil’s motion, Earl Stanhope begged him to be patient until the report of the Committee was available. The motion for Papers of Lord Cecil was withdrawn.
A single copy of the complete discussion from Hansard of April 3 is attached hereto.69
Respectfully yours,
Counselor of Embassy
- Not printed.↩