File No. 893.77/1648
Minister Reinsch to the Secretary of State
Peking, November 19, 1917.
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the Department’s instructions No. 683, dated September 27, relating to the protest of the British Government against the proposed construction by an American corporation of certain railways in the Provinces of Hupeh and Hunan. The strong position taken by the Department in the defense of American industrial opportunities in China is very encouraging to the Legation.
I have the honor to point out that the memorandum of his excellency, the British Ambassador, dated September 7, contains certain misconceptions. Thus the statement that
Other Siems-Carey concessions without exception infringe agreements granting prior rights to other Powers, agreements which have been published and which must be well known to the United States Minister at Peking,
can by no means be conceded. With respect to the alignment allotted from Fengchen in northern Shansi to Ninghiafu in Kansu, it has not and can not be admitted that any agreement exists which would exclude American capital from the construction of this line. This is the position constantly taken by the Legation in this matter, as reported in my despatch No. 1252 of October 31, 1916,37 and No. 1282 of November 28, 1916;41 also, the secret agreement upon which the French protest to the line in Kwangsi Province is based, was never published, nor was its existence known to the Chinese officials most concerned. The statement in his excellency’s memorandum, referring to the Hankow viceroy’s letter of 1905, that “the American Legation at Peking have for a long time possessed a copy of it,” is not correct. No copy of this note was on file in the Legation until October 15, 1917. The copy which was shown to the British Legation here for purposes of verification, is the copy in the collection of the late Mr. Rock hill which is now being edited by Mr. MacMurray, who took this copy to the British Legation purely for his own purposes as editor of the collection in question, and not in any sense as seeking information for the American Legation. Even had this document been officially known to me, I could not have recognized it, as it lacks the ratification of the Central Government and as its recognition would have jeopardized the opportunity of Americans freely to engage in industrial enterprises in China.
I have [etc.]
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- For. Rel. 1916, pp. 199 and 207.↩