811.113/235
Memorandum by the Secretary of State
The British Ambassador brought an inquiry from his Government about the possibilities of action in regard to an embargo on munitions. He said, as I remember it, that his Government regarded our common action with them in this respect as vital and wanted to know about it.27
In the first place, I reminded him of my efforts to get the passage by Congress of legislation which would permit us to act in cooperation [Page 205] with the other producing nations in placing such an embargo and which would give authority to the President for that purpose. I told him that we had failed in obtaining passage of the legislation at this Congress and that the advice of the Chairmen of the two committees was that it had now no chance for passage until the next session.
In the second place, I reminded the Ambassador that as matters now stood, in case of war between Japan and China an attempt to lay an embargo upon both countries would not materially injure Japan and might injure China, although the Japanese fleet would probably institute a blockade anyhow, and that the beneficial result of such action would therefore probably be small for the present at least.
In the third place, I told him that the world was today delivering a most forceful moral judgment against Japan and my hunch was that the moral judgment might lose force if we attempted to couple it with ineffective material action. My own feeling, I said, was in favor of giving time for the moral judgment to have its effect even if we were in a position to follow it up with an embargo on arms, which we were not. I told him that we were about to send a message showing our concurrence on the basis of the facts in our hands with the judgment of the League just as soon as we had seen that judgment.
- The British Embassy made a further inquiry on March 27.↩