500.A15A5 Construction/154: Telegram
The Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Kennedy) to the Secretary of State
[Received April 12—4:33 p.m.]
303. Your 137, April 2, 4 p.m. Vansittart opened a meeting this morning at the Foreign Office for preliminary discussions under paragraph 3, article 25 of the London Naval Treaty, 1936. The British representatives in addition were Admiral Lord Chatfield, Captains Phillips and Danckwerts of the Admiralty, Holman and Fitzmaurice of the Foreign Office; the French representatives were Cambon, the French Naval Attaché Du Tour, and De Leuze, naval expert of the French Foreign Office; Johnson and Commander Nelson of this Embassy. Vansittart opened the discussion with a general statement regarding its purpose and left the meeting, which was subsequently presided over by Admiral Lord Chatfield.
The views of the delegations were requested. (1) We communicated the instructions set forth in your 137, April 2, 4 p.m. (2) De Leuze, who spoke for the French delegation, said his Government regretted that any derogation from the limits set forth in the London Naval Treaty was necessary and desired that any departure should be within as narrow a limit as possible. He expressed in strong terms their anxiety that if no new upper limit were fixed it would encourage building on the part of continental naval powers which might eventually extend to smaller craft than capital ships and this result would naturally cause great anxiety to his Government. His Government’s interest in these present discussions is that an agreed upon upper limit in the category of ships involved in the escalation program be arrived at and made public as soon as possible. (3) Admiral Lord Chatfield said that the delay in announcement of new upper limits for battleships was extremely embarrassing to the British Government in view of its naval agreements, particularly with Germany and Russia, as under the terms of those agreements they will be compelled to announce a definite program to their co-signatories as well as satisfy the House of Commons which is pressing for an early statement of the new British program. The Admiralty, he said, regarded the preservation of the principle of qualitative limitation as of the utmost importance as it had been the burden of the Anglo-American thesis throughout naval limitation negotiations in the past [Page 909] and he stated that the phraseology of article 25 in particular was that of the American delegation. Both he and Captain Phillips as well as the Foreign Office officials were insistent in pressing their view that any reasonable limit, even a high one, which could be declared was better than setting no upper limit at all, and expressed the hope that our Government would indicate an upper limit which would not be exceeded. They particularly desire a statement of the intentions of the United States and, if the United States is unable to state precisely what will be the limit of its departure, they hope that it will be able to state an approximate figure which it knows will not be exceeded. They also desire to know if possible when the United States can make such a statement. Lord Chatfield made it quite plain that the British are prepared to disclose their own figures as soon as we indicate our readiness to discuss the issue involved with a view to fixing a precise new upper limit.