811.0141 Phoenix Group/70
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Chief of the Division of European Affairs (Moffat)
The British Ambassador called this morning on a number of miscellaneous matters:
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(3) The Ambassador then inquired whether we had given consideration to the British note of April 5th on the Pacific Islands. I replied that we had not had an opportunity to give it careful study, and had not yet consulted any other branches of the Government; nonetheless, I could give him a few preliminary thoughts. In the first place, I was not inclined to accept the British premise that we were only interested in obtaining landing fields, while the British were primarily interested in finding places of settlement. Secondly, when the British immediately jumped to a discussion of arbitration or else an aviation deal, it seemed to me that they had overlooked an intermediate stage, namely, an opportunity for experts to discuss the various claims and their bases with a view to trying to reach an arrangement à l’amiable without the matter ever getting to arbitration at all. The Ambassador said that this was an interesting idea, but that we had never told the British Government the extent of our claims. I replied that I thought this was a very legitimate criticism, and that we in turn had been waiting for the British to ask us for such a list.
The Ambassador then again reverted to the aviation problem, and said that so long as we held on to Hawaii alone and refused to allow other planes to land on the Island we were, in effect, maintaining a monopoly on trans-Pacific flying which would constantly give rise to irritation in British, New Zealand and Australian circles. We did not argue this point, however.
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