500.A15A4/1114: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the American Delegation
131. First. I do not feel that you have misled me. I have had no fear as to your loyal desire to conform to the policies of the President, as expressed by myself, or your zeal and ability in carrying them out. I am inexpressably grieved that you should have had misgivings to the contrary. Please dismiss all such thoughts.
Second. Your 16935a reporting your talk with Baldwin and Simon necessarily, however, raised a major emergency for me to confront and decide in the face of which all minor matters of communication and form became of comparative insignificance. Mr. Baldwin proposed a program which he himself termed “revolutionary” and “shocking”; which he said was to be accepted or rejected as a whole, and in which he included the abolishing of the capital ship as an essential center. He informed you that he had already discussed it in the British Cabinet and he specifically asked the consideration of my Government of this plan. Later, in your 125 [233],36 you informed me confidentially but on the direct authority of a member of the British delegation that the British Foreign Minister had “come out wholeheartedly for Baldwin’s plan”; that it was under direct consideration [Page 167] by the Cabinet and “that it was hoped that the plan would be accepted as a whole for presentation at Geneva.” Such news not only indicated the coming of a major crisis in the work of the Conference which might at once reveal a fundamental cleavage between the policies of Britain and America but it no less surely aimed a blow at the most delicate foreign situation which this Government was then handling, namely, our entente with Britain in the crisis in the Far East. Neither you nor he could expect me to stand on form or ceremony in the presence of such an imminent issue and the sending to him of an informal message, through Mr. Mellon, conveying the result of the consideration which he had himself bespoken as to this feature of his plan was a very natural way to forestall such a contretemps. So far as Baldwin is concerned, I have since heard in a second message from Mellon that the purpose of my message was thoroughly understood by both Baldwin and Simon and that Baldwin emphasized his remarks set forth in London’s 19837 not through any sense of irritation but to make a record in the Foreign Office that no such proposals had been officially advanced by any member of the British Government. So far as the essential relations of the two Governments are concerned, which after all are the matters upon which my attention must be primarily concentrated, the effect of my warning has been to lift, temporarily at least, a dangerous cloud from the situation both here and in the Far East, and to assure us here and you in Geneva that this revolutionary proposal will probably not be put forth at all by the British and certainly not as a surprise to us. If there is any divergence indicated by Baldwin’s statement to Mellon from the statement he made to Gibson and Davis, I think it is quite clear that it is not due to any inaccurate reporting by the two latter gentlemen but to a probable and beneficent change in the British policy produced now by the frank disclosure of our own.
Third. The reason why I repeated my caution against any revelation of the total elements of our plan contained in my 12238 was because unless I am mistaken it has now become evident that the British will not put out a “comprehensive” plan like that of Mr. Baldwin’s suggestion, but a much more moderate one. If I am right in this, it would only be an embarrassment to us for them to learn that we had ever considered such a program as I outlined in my 122.
Fourth. I hope that the foregoing will entirely relieve any anxiety as to my feeling. I am grateful for the patience and loyalty that you have shown through long and disappointing months and I am anxious to back you as efficiently as possible in obtaining the eventual success [Page 168] which I confidently hope will come. On my part, I only ask you to realize that since my return I have been plunged into an atmosphere of tension and pessimism in America, beside which even the April atmosphere at Geneva seems a balmy Elysium.