893.00/10497

Memorandum by the Assistant Secretary of State ( Johnson ) of a Conversation With Mr. Thomas F. Millard, Adviser to the Chinese Government

Mr. Thomas F. Millard called upon me this afternoon and stated that yesterday he had been to see the President and had had an opportunity to say to him certain things and that the President had asked him whether he had seen the Secretary. Mr. Millard spoke up and said he had not seen the Secretary and did not expect to see him on this visit but that he had seen me. Mr. Millard stated that [Page 576] the President asked him to say to the Department the things which he had said to the President.

Mr. Millard stated he had endeavored to mention three points to the President during the short period that he had to talk with him. The first one was that Nanking is and is to be the permanent seat of government in China. Mr. Millard stated he felt that this decision on the part of the Chinese was not only of benefit to them but also of benefit to foreigners as it brought the Government closer to the center of business and the center of Chinese population where foreigners came in contact with the Chinese. He stated he felt that our Legation at Peking was isolated from Nanking and that arrangements should be made to move the Legation to Nanking. He said it was entirely possible for us to rent a house in Shanghai for the Minister in order to enable him to maintain contacts with Nanking during the period while there was a house shortage in Nanking as Nanking was in close contact with Shanghai by rail and by telephone and also as the Minister for Foreign Affairs maintained a permanent establishment in Shanghai where Mr. Millard had an office.

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Point no. 3 was the question of treaty revision. Mr. Millard stated that this was a question to which we must give serious thought, that it was not an impending question in any sense that must necessarily come up within the next few weeks but that it must and would come up within the next few months. He said the Chinese were bending every effort to be ready on the first of January, 1930, to go to the governments and state that they had now prepared certain codes and they had established certain courts and that now they expected the powers to give up their extraterritorial rights. He said he told the President that in this connection there was no question of any retreat so far as the Chinese were concerned; that while the present government might be considered a moderate government, whatever government might succeed it must of necessity take this stand on the question of extraterritoriality as there was plenty of sentiment in China among those actively interested in such matters to force any spokesman for China to take this stand. He stated that there was a large radical element in China which was using this as a whip to beat the present government with; that they were constantly being charged with bowing down to the will of the foreign powers in these matters and that whatever our desires might be or whatever moderate desires there might exist among individual Chinese minds, no government could expect to stand or carry on successfully in its work of stabilization that did not press this question at this time or at any future time. He said he felt we might just as well recognize this now as later as it was [Page 577] something we must decide. He pointed out that we could only follow two paths in this matter; one was the path of yielding to the Chinese and getting whatever credit there was to be gotten for such action; the other would be to refuse to yield and to use force for the purpose of making our refusal good. He did not believe that we could or would use force in the premises and therefore felt that our only road could be the first. He stated that the Chinese were very anxious to find out some method of approaching us on this question, that they were very anxious to find some basis for negotiation with us as they felt that they could get a squarer deal on this question from us than from any other power because we had no territorial or political ambitions in that direction.

Mr. Millard stated that he had given a great deal of consideration to this question in the past; that he believed there had been a time, some two or three years ago, when the Chinese might have been willing to agree to some method of gradual abandonment of ex[tra] territorial privileges, but that now the Chinese would no longer agree to any gradual steps and that C. T. Wang, or any other foreign minister, could not obtain the approval of the Executive committee of the Government of any plan of that sort; that they would demand and must demand immediate and unconditional surrender of extraterritorial rights.

Mr. Millard stated that the above represented the substance of what he had said to the President; that he expected to be in Washington at some future time but was going to New York this afternoon. He said his permanent address in New York was care of the Lambs Club.

N[elson] T. J[ohnson]