500.A15A5/670: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Chairman of the American Delegation (Davis)
40. The French Ambassador called at the Department on the 18th instant under instructions which he said were of a very “insistent” character to ask if this Government could not find it possible to agree to a reduction in the unit tonnage and gun caliber of capital ships. The substance of his representations was as follows:
The French Government observes that the desire to reduce tonnage of ships and gun caliber is a world-wide tendency at the present time and will be found in all international efforts; the difficulties with regard to the reduction of tonnage of battleships and the size of their guns are so serious that the French Ambassador had been instructed in the most “insistent” way to bring the views of the French Government to the attention of the Department and, possibly, of the President; all the naval delegations in London except that of the United States have agreed to a reduction from 35,000 to 28,000 tons and from 16-inch gun caliber to 12-inch; the French Government would regret to see the conference ended by a decision which in practice maintains the status quo in the capital ships category; for itself, the French Government does not feel, in the absence of any real progress in this category, that the signature of the agreement would offer to them any real technical interest. The French “insist”, though with the utmost cordiality, in seeing whether something can be done [Page 66] in this matter. It would be regrettable, the French maintain, if a convention were signed to take the place of the Washington and London treaties, if there were no reduction in capital ship tonnage or gun caliber, especially when the governments having heavy financial obligations to assure their own national defense could in this way be relieved partially without compromising their own security.
M. Flandin asks whether it would not be possible for the American Navy to make an effort in this direction and agree to some tonnage reduction between the 35,000 and 28,000 tonnage. The French Government will not take a definite attitude on this subject before having the American answer.
Before leaving, the Ambassador offered his own opinion that a slight reduction in capital ship tonnage might even make it possible for them to accept the agreement; otherwise he felt that it would be dangerous for the French Government to risk the unfavorable public reaction to what might be regarded as the recognition of a change in the Versailles Treaty.57
We have today informed the Ambassador that we felt that too much stress should not be laid upon a slight tonnage reduction in one type of naval vessel when there appears to be a real possibility of a general acceptance of the other points now before the Conference; and that we feel an earnest effort should be made to reach an agreement on battleships along the lines of the British basis of discussion and that we hoped that this and other phases before the Conference would be taken up directly by the French Delegation at the Conference.
- Treaty of Peace Between the Allied and Associated Powers and Germany, signed June 28, 1919, Foreign Relations, The Paris Peace Conference, 1919, vol. xiii, p. 55.↩