Foreign Relations of the United States Diplomatic Papers, 1934, General, the British Commonwealth, Volume I

500.A15A5/85: Telegram

The Chairman of the American Delegation (Davis) to the Secretary of State

Geneva, June 14, 1934—3 p.m.
[Received June 14—12:35 p.m.]

902. Personal for the Secretary. Your 435 June 13, noon.

1. I understand your reasons for not wanting the preliminary naval conversations viewed as a part of the general disarmament negotiations and readily fall into line with that view. On the other hand, I am satisfied it is advisable to deal with the naval problem in a comprehensive way and that this cannot be done without bringing France and Italy in. For instance, the London Conference⁶⁰ was almost wrecked because our Government proceeding on the theory that France and Italy did not count failed to have any preliminary conversations with them and then found that England could not sign a naval treaty that would not make a provision for dealing with the French and Italian Navies and it was only through a last superhuman effort that France and Italy were induced to participate to a sufficient extent to allow England to sign the treaty.

2. I entirely agree with you that it would complicate the problem considerably if the conference were enlarged to include other naval powers. Certainly it is not necessary or advisable to bring them into the preliminary conversations with the possible exception of France and Italy, The British have already announced their intention of keeping France and Italy informed and they will unquestionably want eventually to bring them into the conversations.

3. I fully concur in the advisability of stressing the informal character of the proposed conversations. Nevertheless, I think it is possible and advisable for the conversations particularly with the British to go beyond the exploratory stage. Notwithstanding the apparent reluctance of the Japanese to come to grips with technical questions I think it is possible and advisable to get them to do so. I suspect that the Japanese strategy in this respect is for trading purposes.

4. In spite of certain evidences to the contrary I am fully satisfied that the sentiment of Great Britain and the majority opinion in the British Government will favor cooperating closely with us and that they would only consider a rapprochement with Japan in case they feel that they cannot count on our cooperation sufficiently.

5. I still believe that in case it is not possible to reach an agreement with Japan the British would be in favor of a treaty with us alone which would provide for parity on a sliding scale depending upon what Japan does on the one hand and what the continental European powers do on the other hand.

6. I do not fully share your skepticism as to the possibility of what may be accomplished by the proposed conversations.

7. They are unquestionably necessary at some time and no matter by whom or how they may be conducted it is not possible if they are to succeed to keep them from developing into real negotiations or to maintain for long the fiction that the conversations are casual and unimportant.

8. I will communicate with you further with regard to the relationship between the Embassy and myself.

Davis

60. For correspondence on the London Naval Conference, see Foreign Relations, 1930, vol. i, pp. 1 ff.