500.A15A5/638: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Chairman of the American Delegation (Davis)43
29. Your 72 and previous telegrams on subjects of capital ships and cruisers.
The following is our position with regard to the proposals discussed in your telegrams:
A. Limitation of capital ship guns to 14 inches in caliber subject to adherence by all other principal naval powers prior to January 1, 1937.
It seems to the Navy and State Departments that it is preferable to maintain as a starting point the status quo, namely, the 16-inch gun limitation, and to develop a formula of agreement that during this year no signatory would lay down any ship with over 14-inch gun caliber, but that if Japan does not adhere all will be free at the end of the year.
We feel that the Japanese are not likely to subscribe and that it would be better strategy to stand by the existing limitation while making an offer of a concession rather than to move away from this, the 16-inch gun, limitation and then have to take an initiative and action in order to move back to it.
We should prefer, if possible, to avoid the risk of being maneuvered into a position a year hence where we might have to take the primary responsibility, in view of Great Britain’s apparent decision in any case to use 14-inch guns in their new construction, for moving again to the 16-inch limit with the attendant possibility of creating an apparently direct issue between the Japanese and ourselves.
If the Japanese accept the offer of a concession to a 14-inch gun limitation, the British and our own purposes would be served and the Japanese could share with the British and us the credit for having made possible this lowering of the limitation on gun caliber, and thus the all-around psychological effect would be to the advantage of all three countries and of relations among them.
B. Proposed holiday from January 1, 1937 until January 1, 1943 in the building of cruisers of category (a) and of cruisers of category (b) over 8,000 tons.
C. The proposed setting up of a quantitatively unlimited category of “light surface vessels” with displacement limits of 8,000 to 100 tons and guns of not more than 6.1 inches in caliber.
[Page 50]Proposals B and C deal generally with cruisers and must be considered together.
The Navy and State Departments concur in the view that existing qualitative definitions of categories should, if possible, be maintained, certainly not enlarged, and that a reduction rather than an extension of quantitative limits in categories is desirable.
We still favor granting to the contracting powers the option of meeting their own individual needs through a limited system of transfers between established categories. The proposals in B and C have the effect of maintaining the status quo in 8-inch gun cruisers and large 6-inch gun cruisers, which is in itself a quantitative limitation while permitting, by means of a proposed new category with certain wide qualitative limits and no quantitative limits, the possibility of new unrestricted building.
If it is desired to discuss further the proposal for this new broad category, we would wish to have more detailed information as to the reasons for establishing this suggested new classification and also as to the ultimate tonnage contemplated and whether the destroyer and exempt classes will be merged therein.
- Marginal notation: “This telegram was read and approved by Admiral Taussig and the first paragraph after (A) was approved by the President, J[ames] C[lement] D[unn].”↩