Office of the Historian

882.01 Foreign Control/573: Telegram

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

Washington, June 19, 1933—5 p.m.

164. For General Winship. Your letter June 9. I see little hope of the Firestones changing their insistence on an American as Chief Adviser, and without their approval the League Plan cannot go into effect. Please try, therefore, in every way to effect a compromise whereby other concessions are offered by the Firestones in return for the one requisite they consider essential. If this fails our position remains as set forth in Mr. Stimson’s message of September 25 to Lord Cecil,49 namely that we will not insist on the appointment of an Adviser of any given nationality, but on the other hand will not put pressure on the Firestones. In other words, we seem committed to adopt a more neutral attitude in the dispute than the one you have recommended, and should abstain from voting on this point.…

Phillips
  1. See telegram No. 3, September 25, 1932, to the Acting Chairman of the American delegation at the General Disarmament Conference, Foreign Relations, 1932, vol. ii, p. 758.↩