893.05/173

The Minister in China ( MacMurray ) to the Secretary of State

No. 2354

Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of the Department’s telegram No. 312, September 20, 6 p.m.

While not wishing to make a telegraphic reply thereto which might appear to the Department to be merely contentious, I feel [Page 701] that it is proper and necessary for me to make certain comment upon it.

I am heartily in accord with your views as to the desirability of cooperation among the interested Powers, and as to the limitations upon the possibility thereof, as set forth in the concluding two sentences of your telegram.

I nevertheless venture to dissent from the implied assumption that in this matter the purposes of our Government have been thwarted or perverted by cooperation along lines prescribed by Governments or persons with less realism and constructive purpose than our own. I accept for my own part full responsibility for having taken, with respect to the negotiations on the question of the Provisional Court at Shanghai, an attitude at least as meticulous (or querulous) as that of my Colleagues in dealing with the overtures and efforts of the Nanking Government. … All my Colleagues who have had to deal with the overtures of the Foreign Office have in fact proved very solicitous to meet the situation and very receptive towards any suggestion which seemed at once liberal and practical, such as that outlined in the fourth paragraph of my telegram No. 829 of September 14. Although it was a member of our own Legation staff who more or less concretely formulated that suggestion, it was at once welcomed and recommended to their respective Governments, as a possible solution of the problem, by the Netherlands, the British and the French Ministers. The Dutch and British Legations have indeed vied with each other in claiming credit for the original conception of the idea; and the French Minister has offered to request his Government to enable him to further the project by giving him authorization to offer to the Chinese authorities the same arrangement, as regards the French Concession at Shanghai, in the contingency that such an offer would serve to promote the adoption of the project in the International Settlement. So far as concerns the attitude of the respective home Governments, which are perhaps not unnaturally as cautious as our own in committing themselves to so novel a solution of the problem, we are none of us yet in a position to speak. But as regards the attitude of those who have thus far been dealing with the matter, I acknowledge that I cannot explain to myself the assumption, implicit in the Department’s telegram, that in this matter the Legation has been diverted from the carrying out of the liberal intentions of the American Government by permitting itself to be dominated by reactionary influences.

I have [etc.]

J. V. A. MacMurray