893.51/3047: Telegram
The Acting Secretary of State to the Minister in China (Crane)
333. Your 363, November 9, 1 p.m.
Lamont’s personal comment is as follows:
“It is apparent that the enemies of the Consortium, many of them adherents of the old Anfu crowd, are using the same tactics as when I was in China. When they started this talk about supervision of loan proceeds infringing China’s sovereignty, I had to come out in the open and demand that they be specific, asking them in turn whether they wanted a repetition of the Hukuang railway construction situation with a £6,000,000 loan made to China and fully half of it, according to engineers’ estimates, wasted. Men of affairs and student leaders came to me privately and declared that there must, at any rate at the start, be proper supervision of loan expenditure.
Even as lately as the Consortium meeting in New York, Hsu Un Yuen told me that Premier authorized him particularly to say to me ‘we welcome proper supervision.’
If the Premier has actually made attack on Consortium, perhaps the Minister will deem it wise to inquire from him exactly what is in his mind. Does he want the American Group to recall its new representative just now en route to Peking?”