500.A15A4/1246: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Acting Chairman of the American Delegation (Gibson)
170. Your 305, July 5, midnight. There seems to be some confusion in your telegram between “Limitation of expenditure on matériel as a complementary method to direct limitation” as mentioned in your first paragraph, and “Global expenditure limitation” referred to in the second. The first we can accept; the second we cannot accept even as a principle.
The text you proposed for inclusion in the proposed resolution of adjournment is satisfactory to us in that it refers only to savings in matériel, but this is the ultimate limit to which we can go. In so far as we can estimate the domestic situation, anything further involving global expenditure limitation would in all probability result in a refusal to ratify the treaty.