800.796/814
The Secretary of State to the Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Aviation (Clark) and the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce (Bailey)
My Dear Senators: With your letter of May 13, 1944, you attached a clipping from the New York Times for Thursday, May 11, purporting to report the substance of a speech by Lord Beaverbrook in the House of Lords on May 10, 1944. This referred to the conversations regarding civil aviation recently had in London by Assistant Secretary Adolf A. Berle, Jr., and by Dr. Edward Warner, Vice Chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board, with Lord Beaverbrook. The Department has now received and encloses herewith the official text of the speech in question.19 You are right in understanding [Page 481] that a so-called “American plan” has not been determined, and certainly none which includes “the right of air transportation organizations of nations to set down passengers, mail and cargo and to pick them up anywhere in the world.” Further, it appears that Lord Beaverbrook made no such assertion.
The account in the New York Times of May 11, enclosed with your letter, refers in its first paragraph to “the American-sponsored idea of a Tour Freedoms of the Air’”. This is plainly an error. The so-called “Four Freedoms of the Air” appeared in a draft convention proposed by Canada, not by the United States. This convention was first put forward by the British group; but the British group, on encountering opposition from the United States group, withdrew it. The Associated Press reporter apparently confused the Canadian-sponsored plan with the views of the United States.
Actually, in discussing the Canadian plan, the United States group made it clear that the handling of the principle of innocent passage (which does not include the right to discharge or pick up passengers, mail and cargo) must be at all times subject to full sovereignty and laws of the air of the nation over whose territory the plane might fly, and must also be contingent upon the working out of appropriate air-commerce agreements between the countries involved. While Lord Beaverbrook did not elaborate this, what he said was substantially consistent with it, and it was presumably to that which he referred in stating that “the right of innocent passage must depend on the decisions of an international conference.”
As is not unnatural in extemporaneous debate, the representative of the British Government emphasized points of interest to him and to his Government, and did not attempt to cover all aspects of the matter in the limited time at his disposal. Though Lord Beaverbrook, at various points in his statement, used the word “agreement”, it is sufficiently plain from the context that he used the word in the sense of concurrence in point of view. The conversations were exploratory, without commitment on either side, and merely looked forward to agreements which might later be consummated as a result of further negotiation and international conference.
In conclusion, let me say that I do not believe Lord Beaverbrook’s statement, read in the context of the entire discussion, warranted the conclusions drawn from it by the press which gave concern to your Committees.
I thoroughly appreciate the courteous cooperation of your Committee with the Department, and am especially gratified at your statement that your conferences with Mr. Berle have been of a character tending to make for the best relations between your Committee and the Department of State.
Sincerely yours,
- Not attached to file copy.↩