Foreign Relations of the United States Diplomatic Papers, 1938, General, Volume I

856D.6176/504

The British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Halifax) to the American Chargé in the United Kingdom (Johnson)¹¹

No. W 5007/108/50

London, 26 April, 1938.

Your Excellency: I have the honour to refer to Mr. Johnson’s note No. 16 of the 15th March,¹² in which he was good enough to acquaint me with the views of the United States Government on the subject of the draft proposals for the revision of the International Rubber Regulation Agreement put forward by the Rubber Regulation Committee. I availed myself of the authority given in the last sentence of Mr. Johnson’s note to communicate the text of it to the Committee, and I have now received their observations on it. I do not think that I can do better than to transmit to Your Excellency a copy of the correspondence which has passed on this subject between His Majesty’s Government and the Committee.¹³ A copy of the Committee’s final recommendation is also enclosed.¹⁴

2. It will be seen that the Committee, appreciating the very great interest taken by the United States of America in all questions relating to the renewal of the Agreement, have given the fullest consideration in framing their recommendations to the view of the United States Government, and have adopted their suggestions so far as it appeared to them possible to do so without conflicting with the main principles of the regulation scheme. In the cases where the Committee have not felt able to give effect to the views expressed in Mr. Johnson’s note, they have furnished full explanations of the reasons which in their view made it impracticable to do so. These explanations seem to His Majesty’s Government to be well-founded and will, I think, go far towards clearing up misunderstandings which appear to have existed on certain points.

3. As regards the suggestion that a specific provision should be inserted in the Agreement that there should be no discrimination in the release of rubber to friendly Governments in time of war or other emergency, Your Excellency will observe that a new article 21 has been included in the draft agreement which provides that the Agreement may be suspended at the request of any party in the event of a threat to its security. This article was inserted in the draft at the request of a contracting Government, and its effect will be that in practice the Agreement is likely to be suspended in time of war or other emergency. It would thus render ineffectual any provision of the kind suggested in Mr. Johnson’s note, which would in any case seem to be hardly appropriate for inclusion in an Agreement between producing countries.

I have [etc.]

(For the Secretary of State)

Walter Roberts

11. Transmitted to the Department by the Chargé in his despatch No. 245, April 27; received May 3.
12. Not printed; see Department’s telegram No. 107, March 12, 1 p.m., p. 928.
13. Not printed.
14. British Treaty Series No. 74 (1938): Declaration … Regarding the Regulation of the Production and Export of Rubber (London, October 6, 1938). A reprint, with certain verbal corrections, was issued in 1939.