033.9365/1
Memorandum by the Ambassador in Italy (Long)89
Dr. T. V. Soong, the Minister of Finance of China, called upon me at the Embassy. He had had a conversation with Mussolini and is leaving tonight for Paris and Berlin.
He talked about the aggressions of Japan against China, and characterized it as a permanent policy of Japan and said that she desired to take the whole of China and the three maritime provinces of Russia and then the islands of the Pacific. He said that Japan had the ambition to dominate the world and that sooner or later the other powers of the world would have to stop her. He said that Mussolini had told him that he was of that opinion also and said that Italy would at the proper time take her place in opposition to the aggressions of Japan. He said that the French Government had told him that they were of the same opinion and that at the proper time France would take her position. But he said that England was very slow and would not commit herself and that England had called the problem “an American problem that England felt that it was the work of the United States whose interests in the Pacific were paramount and were associated with the interests of Japan and that the United States would have to lead the opposition. [Page 372] Soong felt that England would follow the lead of the United States.
He said that the people of Manchuria resented the presence of the Japanese and that eventually Japan would have to withdraw from Manchuria just as they had been made to withdraw from Shantung.
- Copy transmitted to the Department in despatch No. 02, July 21, 1933; received August 2.↩