500.A15a3/1417

The British Ambassador ( Lindsay ) to the Secretary of State

My Dear Mr. Secretary of State: I have this morning received a telegram from Mr. Henderson asking me to thank you for the message contained in your letter of March 6th regarding the basis of settlement of the problems left outstanding from the London Naval Conference.

Mr. Henderson asks me to inform you that your views as to the form in which the agreement should be cast accord very closely with his own and, he believes, with those of the French and Italian Governments.

The telegram proceeds:—”It is not proposed to make more than verbal change in the ‘bases of agreement’ before publication on Wednesday and any announcement as to the form in which the agreement should be cast can well be left to a later stage. I hope therefore that it may be possible to announce at an early date that the United States Government agree with the proposed ‘bases of agreement’ subject to a satisfactory settlement of questions of form.”

The message concludes as follows, though I should mention that the underlined words84 were not included in the cyphered text as it reached this Embassy and have been inserted here in order to make the sense of the message clear:—

“It seems plain to us that in order to settle the form and contents of the document(s) in which the bases of agreement will be cast it will be necessary to convoke a drafting committee, probably in London and in view of our great desire that these questions should be settled in a manner satisfactory to the United States Government we much hope that they will be prepared to be represented on this committee. The Japanese Government would also no doubt wish to be represented.”

Believe me [etc.]

R. C. Lindsay
  1. Printed in italics.