031.11 American Museum of Natural History (4th Asiatic)/67
The President (Osborn) and the Director (Sherwood) of the American Museum of Natural History, New York, to the Assistant Secretary of State (Johnson)
Dear Secretary Johnson: I am deeply interested in your letter of July 2733 enclosing a telegram received from Mr. MacMurray34 also in a letter of June 29 just received from Dr. Andrews which throws further light on the situation—a somewhat unexpected light since the head of the Geological Survey of China is found to be the author of these impossible conditions.
Dr. Andrews is so hopeless about the future that he advised selling out our entire equipment and practically abandoning Peking as a base of operations. I cabled him not to do so but to send all the rest of the party back and to remain himself in Peking and hold our ground and await the results of further negotiations until our Government and the Chinese Government can get together and settle the important principle involved in this matter. If you have an opportunity I hope you will kindly draw Secretary Stimson’s attention to this letter as a subject which can be brought up in the autumn but which in the meantime I hope you will both have in mind, namely: [Page 853]
- First, the confiscation of the 1928 collection, secured by authorization of the Chinese Government, is quite as serious as the confiscation of any other American property in China.
- Second, the holding of the 1928 collection in August, 1928 until June, 1929 involved a very serious financial loss for which the American Museum should be remunerated.
- Third, the imposition of practically confiscatory conditions on the 1929 expedition was without precedent in any country in the world, civilized or uncivilized.
- Fourth, the United States Government supports the American Museum of Natural History in drawing a sharp distinction between objects of archaeology and art which should remain in China and objects of purely scientific value, the history of which is the common property of the scientific world.
- Fifth, the American Museum desires to complete its geological and palaeontological survey of Mongolia which has cost nearly half a million dollars and is one of the most important scientific undertakings of the twentieth century.
- Sixth, the American Museum desires to foster the science of palaeontology in China by the training of experts in this field, by the sending of duplicate collections to the museum in Peking, by the completion of its twelve-volume survey of the geology and palaeontology of Mongolia and by the liberal preparation and despatch of duplicate collections to the Palaeontological Museum of the Survey in Peking or to the public Natural History Museum if such is established as planned by Professor Osborn and Director V. K. Ting in 1923.
Yours sincerely,
- Henry Fairfield Osborn
- Geo. H. Sherwood