493.11/1334: Telegram
The Minister in China ( MacMurray ) to the Secretary of State
Peking
,
June 19,
1928—3 p.m.
[Received June 19—1:55 p.m.]
[Received June 19—1:55 p.m.]
476. Your telegram No. 190, June 15, 1 p.m.
- 1.
- Receipts for September to May inclusive which had been retained in files through oversight were forwarded by pouch leaving June 7th.
- 2.
- With a view to obviating embarrassment to Tsing Hua College and the Educational Mission, I have discussed the question rather fully with those best informed in the matter and have let it be known that I should sympathetically welcome any practical suggestion for a provisional arrangement.
- 3.
- Board of Directors of Tsing Hua at a meeting June 17th decided to
send Dr. Wang, Minister of Foreign Affairs at Nanking, the following
telegram:
“In order to enable Tsing Hua College to meet its immediately pressing June obligations, the Board of Directors suggests that you kindly request the American Minister to pay over to the acting president, Mr. Stewart Yui, as an emergency measure, the amount of the June Boxer indemnity remission to be used subject to the approval of the Board.”
- 4.
- I heartily endorse suggestion thus made. Funds for both Tsing Hua and the Educational Mission were fullest [sic] allotted rather unsystematically by the Peking Ministry for Foreign Affairs for expenditure by the president of the college. As the result of long effort to remove these institutions from the pressure of political influences there was constituted last April by order of the Ministry a Board of Directors exercising wide powers particularly as regards budgeting and control of expenditures. It is by this Board, or by the acting president functioning under its control, that the funds accruing from the 1908 remission would naturally be administered pending such readjustments as might be made by a new governmental authority.
- 5.
- In spite of the Executive order of December 28, 1908,15 providing for remission to “The Government of China,” I submit that to cover us in making payments in the manner proposed it would seem necessary that the President should amend that Executive order by one authorizing the Secretary of State to have the several remissions paid provisionally to such recipient as might be satisfactory to the Secretary with a view to insuring the employment of these funds for the purpose of the institutions hitherto established.
- 6.
- Assuming that this could be arranged I would recommend that you authorize me to support the suggestion of Tsing Hua Board of Directors by a telegram to Dr. Wang urging acquiescence in this proposal without prejudice to any political question involved in order to meet the emergency in the interests of the college and of the Educational Mission.
MacMurray