USUN Files
Memorandum of Conversation, by Mr. John C. Ross, Adviser, United States Delegation to the United Nations General Assembly
Secretary Byrnes’ Views on Armed Forces Matter
In the course of a discussion on a number of matters, the Secretary handed Senator Austin the attached, “Possible Redraft of Resolution on Armed Forces”.99 He expressed the thought that we should not go along with the British on anything that looked like a stall. He said that in a phone talk he had with Ben Cohen during the Delegation Meeting this morning1 he had expressed this thought and thought we ought to put up something which would make it clear that we were fully prepared to provide this information in 30 or 60 days.
The Secretary said he thought we could get the Bevin idea in in a paragraph in this resolution.
(The Secretary apparently had in mind the first paragraph of the attached redraft.)
The Secretary said that all the British were doing was to try to expose what they considered to be nothing but a Soviet propaganda effort.
Senator Austin mentioned the position of the Turks and Chinese who were reluctant to report on their troops at home. The Secretary said that could be taken care of by eliminating the phrase “at what points” in the Molotov draft. He said that is what gives them concern. It is the pin-pointing which would be involved as a result of this language.
Secretary Byrnes then went on to say that there was another point which affects us with reference apparently to paragraph 3 of the draft resolution circulated at the United States Delegation Meeting this morning. The Secretary said that the language “at what points in their own territories including territories outside their metropolitan areas for whose administration they may be responsible”. He said that this was very confusing because this might cause us to report on our troops in Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and other places. He said this would give us the appearance of having thousands and thousands of troops all over the world. He said he thought this difficulty could very well be taken care of by paragraphs 2 and 3 of the attached redraft.
Upon returning to the Pennsylvania Hotel I discussed this redraft [Page 1042] somewhat further with Senator Austin. It was agreed that it would be submitted to the Delegation for discussion at the meeting Saturday morning.2 Before having it reproduced for distribution, however, we would have to straighten out the reference to the regulation of armaments in the first paragraph. The Senator felt that this language, particularly the verb “to implement” was too rigid and that the whole reference to disarmament would have to be made more flexible and somewhat more vague.