File No. 893.01/73.
The Department of State to the British Embassy.
memorandum.
The American Government has carefully considered the memorandum which was handed to the Secretary of State by his excellency the British Ambassador on October 27, 1915, concerning the invitation of the Japanese Government to the United States, Great Britain, Russia and France to join Japan in tendering to China informal and [Page 77] friendly advice in the interest of general peace in the Far East to defer for a time the change in the form of its government which is reported to be in contemplation.
The American Government appreciates the courtesy of His Britannic Majesty’s Government in communicating the information that the British Minister at Peking had been instructed to concert with his Japanese colleague and tender the advice suggested.
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.