500.A4/153: Telegram
The Chargé in Japan (Bell) to the Secretary of State
[Received August 24—5:08 a.m.]
279. My 274, August 13, 4 p.m.,72 your 132, August 11, 1 p.m.73 I have just received following dated today from Minister for Foreign Affairs.
“Monsieur le Chargé d’Affaires: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your note of the 13th of this month in which you intimate the gratification of the President of the United States at the [Page 62] cordial response which has been accorded to his suggestion of a conference on the subject of limitation of armament and cognate topics and in which you communicate the President’s invitation to this Government to participate in such a conference to be held in Washington on the 11th of November next on the subject of limitation of armament in connection with which Pacific and Far Eastern questions will also be discussed.
In communicating to you for transmission to the President the hearty and appreciative acceptance of this invitation by the Japanese Government, I would ask you to be good enough in the first place to say to Mr. Harding with what pleasure the Government see him take the initiative in this all-important matter; his great office, the pacific traditions of your Republic, and his own high personal qualifications invest his act with a peculiar appropriateness, which must be universally felt and recognized.
The peace and welfare of the world have long been a chronic object of solicitude to the Japanese Government and people. That attitude has not remained a platonic policy—it has been followed out in action. It results naturally from this pacific attitude towards world problems, that Government and people alike should warmly welcome the idea of the limitation of armaments and the removal of the deadening burden on industry and cultural development which swollen and competitive armaments create.
This Government is also completely sympathetic to the valuable suggestion advanced in your note, that it may well be desirable that the use of novel agencies of warfare should be controlled.
The discussion and removal of any causes of misunderstanding which may exist, and the arrival at an eventual agreement with regard to general principles and their application which will ensure friendship and good mutual understanding between the nations, are regarded as of great value and importance. My Government would emphasize the preeminently vital interest which Japan has in the preservation of the peace of the Pacific and the Far East. She has devoted her utmost efforts towards securing its permanence and its maintenance might well be to her a matter of prime concern. She therefore finds it accords entirely with her inmost desires, to reach in conference a measure of understanding which shall ensure peace being placed once for all upon permanent basis in these regions. It is earnestly hoped, therefore, in Japan, that the conference will secure really useful results and prove a practical success.
The Japanese Government gladly concur in the proposal of the United States Government, that the scope of the discussion of Pacific and Far Eastern problems shall be made the subjects for a free exchange of views prior to the assembly of the conference. They hope that the agenda of the conference will in this way be arranged in harmony with the suggestion made in the memorandum of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs of July 26, 1921,74 bearing on the same subject, in order that the labors of the conference may meet speedily with the fullest measure of successful achievement.
The undersigned cannot conclude without again expressing the thorough and hearty sympathy of his Government with the thesis, [Page 63] so clearly and justly stated in your note, of the crushing encumbrance and menace which modern armaments present to civilization. No efforts can be too unremitting to reduce that menace and encumbrance. In the full consciousness of this fact, the initiative of the President of the United States is warmly welcomed and deeply appreciated, and I would ask you so to assure the President.
I beg you, etc.
Signed Count Yasuya Uchida.”