500.A15A5 Construction/171: Telegram
The Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Kennedy) to the Secretary of State
[Received May 13—3 p.m.]
406. My 233, March 22, 5 p.m., numbered paragraph 4. The Foreign Office has advised me informally of the receipt of a telegram from Ambassador Craigie at Tokyo reporting that the Japanese Vice [Page 914] Minister for Foreign Affairs informed him on May 6 that the Ministry of Marine had reached the conclusion that proposed informal conversations on subject of assurances in regard to Japanese naval construction intentions could not in present circumstances serve a useful purpose. Ambassador Craigie was reminded at the same time by the Japanese Minister that the underlying Japanese policy in this matter was that Japan’s smaller resources as compared with those of the United States and Great Britain obliged her to devise special methods of protection such as secrecy and liberty in the qualitative field and at the present at all events there was no hope of any change in that policy. Ambassador Craigie replied that in that case Japan must take before the whole world the responsibility for a quite unnecessary increase in size of the capital ships of the future and that the British Government could not but draw the worst inferences from the disinclination of the Japanese Ministry of Marine even to discuss this matter in an informal and noncommittal manner.
Copy to Paris.