500.A15a4/364: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Minister in Switzerland (Wilson)
102. Reference is to the last paragraph of your 119, September 8, 9 p.m.31a At the press conferences today and yesterday I gave a summary of my views on disarmament questions for use as background material only. The following is a summary of my remarks:
America is not directly concerned with the problems which lie before the Disarmament Conference. These problems are principally bilateral ones between various European nations, and enough of these problems can be found to suggest the magnitude of the task which confronts the Conference. It is largely because of these bilateral difficulties that the European states are keeping up their armed strength. It is sure to be up hill work cutting down armaments until these problems are solved or until progress is made toward their solution.
In the preparatory work for the London Naval Conference we were vitally and especially concerned in the principal difficulty in need of solution, that is, the matter of the naval relationship among Great Britain, the United States and Japan. We could not proceed with the Conference until that definite question had been solved in a satisfactory manner. Our relationship to the approaching Disarmament Conference is quite different, for in this case European countries alone are concerned with a number of such vital questions. For instance, [Page 523] there is a difficulty which must be solved between Italy and France, another between France and Germany, and another between Germany and Poland. Likewise there must be a determination of the relationship of Russia to the rest of Europe. Any solution of these problems which satisfies the powers directly interested will be satisfactory to us. They should be solved by peace, not by war. That is the vital thing so far as we are concerned. It would make no difference in the solution of these particularly European problems if all of the American armed forces were completely dissolved. In preparing for the General Disarmament Conference, therefore, our function must necessarily be to encourage others to come to grips with their own problems just as we did when similar problems were on our doorstep.
We will refrain from expressing opinions on the several problems which the European countries are to decide before the convening of the Disarmament Conference. Such action would tend to involve us in those entanglements from which we have by tradition stood aloof. Nevertheless, we are not able, ostrich-like, to ignore world questions and the effect which our view-point may have upon those questions. We have been privileged to lead in the movement for Disarmament up to this time and we shall continue to exert our full influence toward just and effective disarmament in cooperation with the nations of Europe. This Government is not indifferent to the value of the proposal which Grandi has just made at Geneva and although I have refrained from making any public statement on the matter out of a desire not to embarrass either Signor Grandi or the nations represented at Geneva, I have made it clear to the representatives of the press that I completely favor the purpose of the proposal. We have not yet received the details of the Grandi plan, but we are equally concerned with him in seeing that the powers represented at the Disarmament Conference shall not have their attention distracted or their ears deafened by the noise of hammering on new armament construction. (This last phrase I have used today in conversation with several chiefs of mission who came in to see me).