810.34 Leasing/159
The British Embassy to the Department of State
His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom desire to place on record the following views with regard to the recent proposal for the leasing to Latin-American Republics of destroyers not at present in use by the United States Navy.
His Majesty’s Government consider that if loans of vessels had been regarded as practical politics when Article XVIII of the Washington Treaty24 was framed, provisions to cover that contingency would certainly have been inserted. Thus the loaning of ships appears to His Majesty’s Government to constitute a violation of the spirit of Article 22 of the 1936 London Naval Treaty, which reproduces in substance the text of Article XVIII of the Washington Treaty.
As regards the destroyers which it is proposed to loan in the present instance, it is felt that even though they were to be used for training purposes and would not be employed as fighting ships, they would still be bound to retain their fighting qualities and potentialities, which a vessel intended for training purposes does not and never can possess, and must therefore, contrary to the provisions of Article 22, become a service vessel of war in a foreign navy. It would be hard to maintain that the destroyers would be completely converted into training ships, and thus lose all their fighting value, if they were only on loan and after a certain period of time had to be returned to the United States Government.
Apart from these considerations, His Majesty’s Government view with much apprehension the serious consequences which might result for all concerned in the event of such a practice becoming at all general. The whole balance of naval power might be upset and it might become impossible to calculate the effective strength of the fleet of any given country. It was precisely such a sudden alteration of naval strength that the provisions in question were intended to avert.
- Treaty between the United States of America, the British Empire, France, Italy, and Japan, signed at Washington, February 6, 1922, Foreign Relations, 1922, vol. i, pp. 247, 252.↩