701.9411/238c: Telegram

The Acting Secretary of State to the Commission to Negotiate Peace

1460. For Secretary Lansing from Phillips.

After my conversation with Ishii yesterday on the Tientsin affair, see my 1452,70 he asked me whether the Department had received any confidential message relating to him from Morris,71 to which I replied in the negative. He then told me that he was going home on leave during the first week in May, to consult with his Government on certain matters. I expressed the hope that he would have a pleasant trip and soon return, to which he replied, for my confidential information only, that he did not propose to return. I expressed considerable surprise and concern, whereupon he referred to the Baron Sakatani incident in Peking and Mr. Beinsch’s action in discouraging Sakatani’s appointment after the assurance which Ishii himself had given to his Government that this Government approved of the appointment. He said that his relations were of such an intimate character with Sakatani that he felt there was no other course left open to him in the circumstances; that he had been trying for a long time to persuade his Government to give him leave to return home, but that he had only recently received his Government’s approval.

I had supposed that the whole incident was satisfactorily settled when you so generously assured Ishii that while you had no recollection of the particular conversation with him regarding Sakatani you accepted the memorandum of explanation which he presented to you as correct. I felt that you would wish to know of Ishii’s conversation with me as above reported.

Phillips
  1. Not printed; quotes the telegram sent Apr. 4 to the Ambassador in Japan, vol. ii, p. 424.
  2. Roland S. Morris, Ambassador in Japan.