Office of the Historian

893.05/181: Telegram

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

Peiping, November 14, 1929—8 p.m.
[Received November 15—10:23 a.m.4]

1000. Legation’s No. 983, November 11 [12], 6 [1] p.m.

(a) On November 11th the Senior Minister informed the Minister of Foreign Affairs by telegraph of the names of the delegates who would participate in the negotiations relating to the Provisional Court, the nationalities represented including American, British, French, Japanese and Dutch. The telegram also stated that upon receipt of notification of the names of the Chinese delegates the interested Legations would instruct their delegates to proceed to Nanking.

(b) Yesterday the following telegram in reply was received by the Senior Minister from the Minister for Foreign Affairs:

  • “1. Our treaty; with Japan5 has expired and she has not been invited to participate in the negotiations concerned.
  • 2. Delegates from Great Britain and the United States are acceptable on the condition that their respective Legation official[s] should be the ranking members.
  • 3. Regarding Netherlands and France, I beg to request that either Legation officials are to be appointed in place of the gentlemen you communicated to me or in addition to them on the same condition that they should be respectively ranking member[s].
  • 4. The names of Chinese delegates will be duly communicated to you later.”

(c) At a meeting of the interested Heads of Legations today it was agreed that it would be virtually impossible to reach any workable agreement without Japanese participation. The Japanese Chargé d’Affaires undertook to ascertain as soon as possible whether his Government proposed to insist upon participation in the negotiations. Upon the assumption that the Japanese Government would so insist, the interested Ministers agreed to submit for the approval of their respective home Governments the following draft telegram [Page 714] to be despatched to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the event that the Japanese Chargé d’Affaires should receive an affirmative reply:

“As regards the first point in Your Excellency’s telegram, I have to point out that the interested Ministers [apparent omission] the participation of Japanese representatives in the negotiations, without regard to the question whether or not the treaty between China and Japan remains in force, by reason of the fact that under existing arrangements determining the state of the International Settlement at Shanghai, Japan does in fact share in the responsibility of the administration of the Settlement so that no practically satisfactory arrangement could be expected to result from negotiations which ignored the actual situation in that respect.

With respect to your second point, I am requested by my colleagues to bring to Your Excellency’s attention the fact that the several representatives previously named to you already bear a diplomatic character by reason of their appointment as special representatives of their respective Legations and would sign as such any agreement which may be reached.”

I beg leave to request the Department’s approval of my concurrence in the despatch of the foregoing in the contingency above described.6

(d) The above repeated to Shanghai for information.

(e) Bucknell left for Shanghai today.

MacMurray
  1. Telegram in three sections.↩
  2. Signed at Shanghai, October 8, 1903, British and Foreign State Papers, vol. xcvi, p. 578.↩
  3. In telegram No. 1029, November 22, the Chargé in China informed the Department that the note was sent on November 22 (893.05/187).↩