893.00/4362: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Minister in China (Schurman)
126. Your telegram 217, May 13, 8 p.m.
The Department’s understanding is that the only right or obligation of the Protocol Powers with respect to a two-mile zone on either side of the railway is a right of jurisdiction in the matter of crimes and offenses “affecting the railway or the telegraphic communications or the persons and property of soldiers of the allied forces” as specified in the Dean’s note of August 2, 1901, to the Chinese Plenipotentiaries. (See Foreign Relations of the United States, 1901, Appendix, p. 294.) In connection with the restoration of Tientsin to the Chinese authorities in 1902 the Powers maintaining the Provisional Government of that city restated this understanding in terms which led the Chinese Government to recall attention to the wording of the note of 1901. (See Foreign Relations, 1902, particularly pages 199 and 201.)
[Page 706]Your adherence to strict impartiality as between the two leaders accords fully with the Department’s view that foreign nations should stand so far as possible aloof from the internal dissensions in China.