711.9412Anti-War/44: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Chargé in Japan (Neville)
73. Your 82, July 6, 5 p.m. The following memorandum was handed to the Japanese Chargé d’Affaires this afternoon:
The Japanese Chargé d’Affaires called at the Secretary’s request and the Secretary gave him Mr. Neville’s telegram from Tokyo, dated July 6, 1928, to read. He then explained that the use of the language “declare in the names of their respective peoples” has not the meaning or the significance attributed to it by the Japanese Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs. The official text of the treaty will be in French and English and in the English the words “in the name of” are synonymous with the words “on behalf of” to which, I take it, the Japanese Government would certainly not object. Murray’s New English Dictionary, Volume VI, Letter N, page 14, which carries more authority than any other English dictionary, defines “in the name of” as follows: “That the action is done on account of, or on behalf of some other person or persons”, so that the translation into the Japanese would be perfectly accurate if the Japanese Government translated the treaty “on behalf of” their people.
The first treaty submitted by M. Briand contains the phrase “au nom du Peuple irancais et du Peuple des Etats-Unis d’Amérique”. The Dictionnaire de L’Academic Francaise, 6th Edition, Volume II, page 271, the most authoritative French dictionary, gives as a definition of the phrase, “au nom de”, the phrase “de la part de”, [Page 105] which, translated in English, means “on behalf of”, so that either the French or English text would justify a translation into Japanese of “on behalf of”.
The Secretary explained that this was the language originally proposed by France, that it has now been submitted to fourteen Governments, and to change the wording would probably lead to many suggestions of other changes which would inevitably cause delay and embarrassment. He said he was very sure that under the circumstances the Japanese Government would see that the language had no such significance as is attributed to it.