763.72119/6140a: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Japan (Morris)44
Following is text of statement issued by President Wilson tonight.
“The Government of the United States has noted with the greatest interest the frank statement made by Viscount Uchida with regard to Japan’s future policy respecting Shantung. The statement ought to serve to remove many of the misunderstandings which had begun to accumulate about this question. But there are references in the statement to an agreement entered into between Japan and China in 191545 which might be misleading, if not commented upon in the light of what occurred in Paris when the clauses of the Treaty affecting Shantung were under discussion. I therefore take the liberty of supplementing Viscount Uchida’s statement with the following:
In the conference of the 30th of April last, where this matter was brought to a conclusion among the heads of the Principal Allied and Associated Powers, the Japanese delegates, Baron Makino and Viscount Chinda, in reply to a question put by myself, declared that:
‘The policy of Japan is to hand back the Shantung Peninsula in full sovereignty to China, retaining only the economic privileges granted to Germany, and the right to establish a settlement under the usual conditions at Tsingtao.
The owners of the railway will use special police only to insure security for traffic. They will be used for no other purpose.
The police forces will be composed of Chinese, and such Japanese instructors as the Directors of the Railway may select will be appointed by the Chinese Government.’
No reference was made to this policy being in any way dependent upon the execution of the Agreement of 1915 to which Count Uchida appears to have referred. Indeed, I felt it my duty to say that nothing that I agreed to must be construed as an acquiescence on the part of the Government of the United States in the policy of the notes exchanged between China and Japan in 1915 and 1918; and reference was made in the discussion to the enforcement of the Agreements of 1915 and 1918 only in case China failed to cooperate fully in carrying out the policy outlined in the statement of Baron Makino and Viscount Chinda.
I have, of course, no doubt that Viscount Uchida had been apprised of all the particulars of the discussion in Paris, and I am not making this statement with the idea of correcting his, but only to throw a fuller light of clarification upon a situation which ought to be relieved of every shadow of obscurity or misapprehension.”
Repeat to Peking.
- See last paragraph for instruction to repeat to Peking.↩
- See Foreign Relations, 1915, pp. 171 and 197.↩