Office of the Historian

793.003/407: Telegram

The Ambassador in Great Britain (Dawes) to the Secretary of State

[Paraphrase]
London, September 8, 1930—3 p.m.
[Received September 8—1:10 p.m.]

216. The Department’s 225, September 7, 1 p.m., today was discussed with the Assistant Secretary of State who pointed out the British Government’s commitment, not alone by its September 1927 declaration,62 but also by the statements of the British Minister in China to the Chinese Government, preventing the British Government from seeing its way to instruct Sir Miles Lampson to defer presenting the draft to the Chinese Minister for Foreign Affairs until October 2 or any date in fact after September 11. It was pointed out also by the Assistant Secretary of State that the Chinese Government had announced publicly the fact that Lampson would submit proposals in September.

Accordingly, if the Japanese Government is not ready to join in presenting proposals (see the Department’s telegraphic instruction to Peiping, third paragraph, quoted in the Department’s 225), the Assistant Secretary of State advises me that his Government would welcome the Department’s informing the Chinese Legation at Washington [Page 466] in the sense of the Department’s telegraphic instruction to Peiping, fourth paragraph.

Keen regret was expressed by the Assistant Secretary of State that the Department of State should in any way have misunderstood the British Government’s desire for the United States to join in forming a common general policy toward China and for this cooperation to extend to all differences which would be permitted by the respective commitments of the British and American Governments. It was pointed out by the Assistant Secretary of State that the recent conversations between the two Governments, with the inference that other governments were excluded, had, he most confidentially stated, caused in some quarters a certain resentment against his Government.

Dawes
  1. On January 22, 1927, the British Foreign Office issued a statement on its policy concerning China. See note No. 41, January 19, 1927, from the British Ambassador, Foreign Relations, 1927, vol. ii, p. 344.↩