File No. 893.01/72.
The Department of State to the Japanese Embassy.
memorandum.
The American Government appreciates the invitation extended to it by the Imperial Japanese Government to join in the tender of informal and friendly advice to the Republic of China to defer for a time in the interest of general peace in the Far East the change in its form of government which is reported to be under consideration.
The American Government is naturally in sympathy with republican institutions, but is of opinion that any change by the Chinese in the form of their government, however radical, is wholly a domestic question and that any sort of interference by the Government of the United States would be, therefore, an invasion of China’s sovereignty and would be without justification unless convincing evidence, which is not now in the possession of the United States Government, should show that any foreign interests which it is the privilege of the United States to safeguard would be imperilled.
Washington , November 4, 1915.