793.94/4806
Memorandum by the Secretary of State
The Japanese Ambassador said he came to tell me that his Government was withdrawing the Twenty-fourth Mixed Brigade, which was half of the Twelfth Division, and the Eleventh Division; that the Twelfth Division was part of the first landing force sent by Japan, and the Eleventh Division was part of the later reinforcements. I then asked the Ambassador what he had heard about the meeting of the Conference in Shanghai, and he reported that he had heard that they met on the fourteenth, and gave me an account of the meeting and of the matters discussed, which corresponded substantially with the information I had heard already from Minister Johnson. The Ambassador said he understood that China was insisting on not discussing matters which were questions of policy apart from the evacuation, but that he was glad to hear that they had been willing to discuss the ratification of Mayor Wu’s promise of January twenty-eighth. I told the Ambassador that I understood that this meeting was to be confined to the liquidation of the military situation and that I realized that, while it should not take up matters of policy not connected with the Shanghai incident, it was quite proper and necessary that it should take up questions of the violence which had been directly concerned with the military incident. He said he understood my position. The Ambassador said that he hoped that some way would be found to take care of the territory evacuated by the Japanese Army; that he had heard that at first the Chinese representatives had refused to promise that the Chinese Army would not immediately advance into that territory but that later they had agreed to stand still temporarily. I said I had heard the same thing. The Ambassador asked me whether I had any ideas as to what should be done for policing that zone eventually. I told him that I recognized that it was a problem produced by the situation and that some solution must be found for it, but I had none to suggest and was leaving the suggestions to the people who were on the ground and were familiar with it. I reminded him that I had always contended with him that it would be to the advantage of both Japan and China to have neutral observers present in these discussions and that this seemed to be borne out by the success of this first meeting. The Ambassador laughed and said he remembered it and that now that we had so many neutrals present it ought to be successful. I told him that, although I had no close knowledge of the situation, it seemed to me that one of the great difficulties of the evacuated zone was that China did not have an adequate police force to take care of it; that [Page 215] even if the neutral powers should police it for awhile with military forces, that could only be temporary, and that the only suggestion which had come to me in my experience was the training of a Chinese constabulary under foreign instructors. I told the Ambassador of my experience in Nicaragua; that we had trained up a very efficient constabulary for the Nicaraguan Government, and that immediately after the election in Nicaragua next November we were going to withdraw our instructors and leave Nicaragua a very good force. Possibly something like that could be done in China, but I had not suggested it to the negotiators. The Ambassador said that was very interesting and that as I had had so much experience with that sort of a situation, both in Nicaragua and in the Philippines, he hoped I would make the suggestion some time.
The Ambassador then told me that he was instructed to say that his Government was going very slowly about the recognition of the new State of Manchuria and that it would be a long time before they decided. In reply, I took up a copy of the Nine-Power Treaty and asked the Ambassador to read Article 2, which he did. I told him that I was of the opinion that that Article forbade us from recognizing the new State of Manchuria and I suggested that he bring that Article to the attention of his Government as it appeared to be equally binding upon Japan.