Office of the Historian

500.A15A5/108: Telegram

The Ambassador in Great Britain (Bingham) to the Secretary of State

London, June 23, 1934—5 p.m.
[Received June 23—2:30 p.m.]

351. From Davis. Your 259, June 22, 4 p.m. American newspapermen almost without exception believe that the British expected us to come to London with a plan or project which we would immediately table and when we failed to do this they determined to draw us out first by publicity and second by presenting the Admiralty’s maximum demands which are well known to newspapermen here. According to this view the British desire to obtain expositions of position successively from us, the Japanese, the French and the Italians in order that they may ascertain the maximum points of agreement and draw compromise terms of reference on which the Conference may be based.

With regard to your last paragraph quoting an Associated Press despatch, the Associated Press office here has repeated to me its text which read “suspended” instead of “stopped” and “pending receipt of” instead of “on receipt of”. After the meeting between the technical experts the British press office informed the correspondents that the British naval experts had explained their technical naval position to the Americans and that no time had been fixed for a further meeting. [Page 272] When newspapermen asked why no time had been set they were informed that presumably the Americans had to get instructions from Washington.

The British Admiralty 2 weeks ago told our newspapermen what in effect was their technical position; consequently when they were later informed that the British had explained their technical position to us, our men obviously made use of the information that had been given them and wrote their despatches accordingly. We are informed, and circumstances bear this out, the Government has ordered the Daily Telegraph and the Morning Post the big navy papers to publish nothing about these conversations. The Daily Herald, an opposition paper, made one attack against the Government yesterday, but has not followed it up with information today. [Davis.]

Bingham