Allied Maritime Transport Council

On 3 December 1917 the great inter-Allied conference, which had been sitting in Paris since 29 November, came to an end. Among the resolutions it adopted at its close, the one with the most far-reaching consequences was that of the committee on maritime transport and imports. The British chronology of the war records under this date that the conference decided to set up the Allied Maritime Transport Council, also called the Inter-Allied Maritime Transport Council. In the council Britain, France and Italy, which had already been buying grain and chartering neutral ships jointly, were to agree together with the United States on how to use the ships that, after a year of unrestricted submarine warfare, were desperately scarce.

The official report of the conference recorded that the delegates of the four powers unanimously recognised the need for co-operation that would allow the most economical use of the Allies’ entire tonnage, its allocation so that it would best serve the common war effort, and the adjustment of the import programmes of the individual countries to what the ships could actually carry. Each state was to appoint one or two ministers, and the United States one or two special delegates, responsible to their governments for carrying out what was agreed. They were to meet in Paris or London whenever necessary. The key sentence provided that the competent ministers of France, Italy and Britain, together with the representatives of America, would ensure the exchange of information and the co-ordination of policy, setting up a permanent office and staff for this purpose. Arthur Salter, a British shipping official who later became chairman of its executive, wrote that it was precisely this sentence that formed the legal basis of the whole council.

No common fleet

The resolution was a compromise. At the conference the idea returned of pooling the Allies’ ships under the management of an international authority with full executive power. It was rejected, because no country wanted to place its ships under the orders of a body in which it might be outvoted. The council was therefore given no authority over any ship. It was to study the Allies’ resources and needs, compare import programmes and recommend a common policy to the governments. Execution lay with the ministers who sat on it and at the same time directed shipping, trade or supply in their own countries. The model was the Wheat Executive, the joint grain-purchasing body that had operated since 1916. Inter-Allied committees for food, munitions and raw materials were to be set up on the same pattern.

A communiqué issued on 6 December said briefly that the Allies had decided to use their maritime transport and supplies jointly and were creating an organisation to draw up a common, constantly updated programme. This would make it possible to cut imports and free as many ships as possible to carry American troops. The resolution developed the principles laid down in the tonnage agreement of 3 November and worked out later in London with the mission of Colonel Edward House. The committee also appealed to the Americans to build more ships and to transfer at once 500,000 tons deadweight to France and Italy, and in time an average of at least 1.25 million tons.

From resolution to council

The council did not begin work at once. The officials who were to form its executive took up the most urgent matters, above all coal supplies for Italy and France, before any formal structure existed. Only in February 1918 did an informal meeting of representatives of the four states at the Foreign Office in London settle the details of the organisation, choose the name Allied Maritime Transport Council and decide to convene the council in March.

The council met for the first time on 11 March 1918 at Lancaster House in London and sat until 14 March. Britain was represented by Lord Robert Cecil and the Shipping Controller Joseph Maclay, France by the ministers Étienne Clémentel and Louis Loucheur, Italy by two ministers, and the United States by Raymond B. Stevens of the United States Shipping Board. The council itself met rarely. The day-to-day work and the arrangements with the ministers of the individual countries were carried on by its executive, headed by Salter, and alongside him the heads of the national sections: the Frenchman Jean Monnet, later a founder of the European Communities, the Italian Bernardo Attolico and the American George Rublee. The council had no power of its own, but in the last year of the war it was there that the Allies agreed how to divide the ships between carrying the American army, food for Europe and supplies for the war industries.