711.4216Ni/337
The Secretary of State to the Minister in Canada (Armour)
Sir: The President has given a great deal of thought to the St. Lawrence Waterway project and the most practicable means of bringing about approval of a treaty in the United States and Canada looking to the inauguration of actual construction work on this development. As you know, the President sent a strong message to the Senate at its first regular session after he assumed office, urging immediate approval of the Treaty of July 18, 1932;47 the President, moreover, made personal appeals to a number of Senators in an endeavor to bring about the approval of the treaty by the Senate.
Notwithstanding these efforts, the treaty did not obtain the necessary two-thirds majority of the Senate and thus failed of approval. Our present concern is to endeavor to devise a means whereby a treaty looking to this development can be brought into effect.
I sent your predecessor an instruction dated February 21, 1935, dealing with the Convention and Protocol for the preservation and improvement of Niagara Falls, which was signed at Ottawa on January 2, 1929, and which has been approved by both houses of the Canadian Parliament. In that instruction I stated that during the Senate hearings of 1931 on the Niagara Falls Convention it became manifest that the members of the Foreign Relations Committee were in hearty accord with the proposal to construct compensating works to preserve [Page 838] the beauty of the Falls. I added, however, that the Committee apparently felt that the Convention conferred unusual and unwarranted advantages upon a private American power company, which under the Convention would receive the benefit of the additional diversion on the American side in return for defraying the American share of the cost of the proposed compensating works. On that account, I further stated that there appeared to be no likelihood that the Convention of January 2, 1929, will be approved by the Senate.
The President feels that there would be obvious advantages to both the United States and the Canadian governments in negotiating a new treaty to deal with the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence basin as a whole, including the problems relating to Niagara Falls. You are, accordingly, requested to discuss this whole question with the Prime Minister at the earliest possible moment, in order that his views may be obtained.
If the Prime Minister is agreeable to the suggested procedure, it is the President’s intention to withdraw at once from the Senate the present St. Lawrence Waterway Treaty of 1932 and the Niagara Falls Convention of 1929. We would be prepared to institute negotiations looking to a new treaty at once.
Very truly yours,