793.94/2209
Memorandum by the Secretary of State
The Japanese Ambassador had come to see Mr. Castle but as Mr. Castle was engaged and I was free, I saw Mr. Debuchi. He told me that the Council had voted to invite the United States to participate in the discussion of the Kellogg Pact and he did not know what had happened after that. I told him that I had talked with Mr. Gilbert on the telephone and I knew; that the invitation had been extended and that it had been accepted at 5:00 o’clock and Mr. Gilbert had sat in the Conference at 6:00 o’clock, and that the opening speeches had been interchanged.43 He said that personally he was very glad. He said that the objections by his country had been made only on juridical grounds. I told him that in spite of that last fact, the fact that Japan had opposed the invitation to us44 and that on the same day a spokesman of the Foreign Office at Tokyo had made the statement which he had made yesterday, would certainly lead the whole world to believe that Japan did not wish us to sit and that our two countries were arrayed against each other. I said I was very sorry over this for it undid everything that I had been working for since September and I thought it would also undo much that the Ambassador and I had been working for during the past two years. He said he knew that, it was true, and he felt very sorry. I then said that in accepting the invitation of the League [Page 27] of Nations I had had very largely in mind avoiding this appearance of a personal issue between Japan and America which would otherwise appear in case the Kellogg Pact were invoked by us in America instead of its being done by the group of nations in Geneva. The Ambassador got the point at once and immediately said he had felt all along that that was my purpose. I reminded him that I had been working from the beginning to have Japan and China get an opportunity to settle this by direct negotiation. He said he knew that. I told him that neither the President nor I could understand this action of the Foreign Office spokesman yesterday and we did not see how Mr. Shidehara could have done it. He again said, as he had said yesterday, that he felt certain the spokesman had made a mistake. He told me that he had sent a very long telegram yesterday expressing his views strongly against what had been done in Tokyo. He told me that the press had had a flash that immediately after the receipt of the telegram the Cabinet at Tokyo had gone into session, but he said he had received no news of what they had done.