500.C/1018: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Consul General at Geneva (Tittmann)
74. Your 100, June 27, 7 p.m. The Department is not in a position to advise you that the Government could extend such an invitation. [Page 321] To do so would, as Mr. Avenol has pointed out, involve an obligation to make possible the continued functioning of the technical services of an international and intergovernmental organization of which this government is not a member. We do not feel that we could assume such a responsibility without the approval of the Congress and we do not consider that it would be possible to seek the agreement of the Congress at this time.
As you well know, there are a number of political questions associated with the League of Nations and the activities of the United States Government in connection therewith. These questions are of such a nature that, in spite of the great interest of this government in the technical and non-political work of the League, serious doubt is held in the Department that the transfer of the technical sections to this country would be entirely understood and approved by members of the Congress and by large sections of the people of the United States.