File No. 5767/65.
The Secretary of State to Ambassador O’Brien.1
Washington, November 11, 1909.
Referring to the convention signed at Peking September 4, 1909, between Japan and China regarding the Manchurian Provinces of the Chinese Empire, communicated to the department by the Japanese Embassy at Washington, Mr. Knox informs Mr. O’Brien that after a careful study of the communication, made in the spirit of that frank exchange of views which has ever characteriezd relations between Japan and the United States, and having in mind the principles to which China and Japan are equally obligated by their many engagements to all other nations having interests in the Far East, it is assumed that the joint exploitation of mines by these two countries along the South Manchurian and Autung-Mukden Railways does not involve a monoply of the privilege and right to open mines in that territory to the exclusion of Americans or others from that wide field of industrial enterprise, but that the provision of article 4 has for its object certain specified mines near the railways and designated in accordance with the provisions of the 1907 Mukden draft agreement.
Mr. Knox says the Government of the United States would be gratified to learn that the views herein expressed accord with those of Japan, and directs Mr. O’Brien that, in view of the Japanese foreign office memorandum of last June, which gave the department the distinct impression that Japan did not intend a monopoly of rights in Manchuria, and of semiofficial assurances to the same effect recently made to the American Embassy at Tokyo, he may present the department’s friendly inquiry with a view to receiving an official statement which may be used to satisfy public opinion in the United States.
- Mutatis mutandis to the legation at Peking.↩