810.34 Leasing/55
Memorandum by the Secretary of State of a Conversation With the British Ambassador (Lindsay)
The British Ambassador called upon his own request and stated that he came on his own initiative and without any instructions from his Government. He proceeded to speak of the proposed loan to Brazil by this Government of certain obsolete torpedo destroyers for training purposes and said that in his judgment such loan would violate Article 22 of the Naval Treaty; that a new and, as he conceived it, dangerous practice of loaning naval war vessels to one government by another would be introduced; that this was calculated to create serious repercussions among certain countries in Europe, especially those signatory to the Naval Treaty.
I then proceeded to say to the Ambassador that my letter to the Senate Committee and our statements to the press have rather fully set out the facts of the proposal; that it has been the practice from time to time to permit students of South American governments to [Page 157] come to this country and receive training on our naval vessels; that we send naval, and military, and many other kinds of experts to South American countries to train and otherwise serve their governments and their peoples; that there is not conceived to be any difference in principle between sending groups of students to this country to be trained in our naval vessels and sending an old vessel, out of commission, to Brazil or other South American countries solely for the training of their students and for no purpose of an objectionable or questionable nature; that other countries will do this identical thing, as did our German friends in the case of Turkey prior to the World War when Turkish commerce was largely taken over and even a secret treaty negotiated. I added that we did not want to see anything like this happen in South America. Finally, I said that, of course, while it is true that the Naval Treaty has been violated in many ways by most countries, we had no disposition ourselves to violate this or any other treaty and that we felt safe in our attitude with respect to its observation; that also we had, of course, planned to acquaint other signatories to the Naval Treaty with the proposal. This was practically the end of the conversation. The Ambassador held out rather definitely his personal opinion that the Treaty would be violated.