793.94/2317: Telegram
The Chargé in Japan (Neville) to the
Secretary of State
Tokyo, October 24, 1931—9
a.m.
[Received October 24—4:10 a.m.]
193. The Department’s 200, October 20, 2 p.m. I have received the following
note from the Minister for Foreign Affairs:
“I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your note of October
21 in which, under instructions of your Government, you were so good
as to call the attention of the Japanese to the obligations assumed
by Japan as a signatory of the Treaty for the Renunciation of
War.
The Japanese Government highly appreciate the sympathetic concern of
the American Government in the maintenance of international peace.
Their position bearing on the stipulations of the treaty in question
is set forth in the accompanying statement. Entertaining the same
earnest hope expressed in your communication under review, the
Japanese Government remain unshaken in the belief that a method for
resolving by pacific means their present difficulties with China
will soon be found upon direct negotiations between the two
disputants in the spirit of mutual good will and helpfulness”.
The accompanying statement is as follows:
- “1. The Japanese Government realize as fully as any other
signatories of the Pact of Paris of 1928, the responsibility
incurred under the provisions of that solemn pact. They have
made it clear on various occasions that the Japanese railway
guards in taking military measures in Manchuria since the night
of September 18 last have been actuated solely by the necessity
of defending themselves, as well as of protecting the South
Manchuria Railway and the lives and property of Japanese
subjects, against wanton attacks by Chinese troops and armed
bands. Nothing is farther from the thoughts of the Japanese
Government than to have recourse to war for the solution of
their outstanding differences in China.
- 2. It is their settled aim to compose those differences by all
pacific means. In the note of the Japanese Minister for Foreign
Affairs to the Chinese Minister at Tokyo, dated October 9,45 the Japanese
Government
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have already
declared their readiness to enter into negotiations with the
responsible representatives of China for an adjustment of the
present difficulties. They still hold the same view. So far as
they are concerned, they have no intention whatever of
proceeding to any steps that might hamper any efforts intended
to assure the pacific settlement of the conflict between Japan
and China.
- 3. On the other hand they have repeatedly called the attention
of the Chinese Government to the organized hostile agitation
against Japan now in progress in various parts of China. The
suspension of all commercial intercourse with Japanese at
present in China is in no sense a spontaneous act of individual
Chinese. It is enforced by anti-Japanese organizations that have
taken the law into their own hands, and are heavily penalizing,
even with the threat of capital punishment, any Chinese who may
be found disobeying their arbitrary decrees. Acts of violence
leveled against Japanese residents also continue unabated in
many places under the jurisdiction of the Government of Nanking.
It will be manifest to all fair observers of the actual
situation that those activities of the anti-Japanese
organizations are acquiesced in by the Chinese Government as a
means to attain the national ends of China. The Japanese
Government desire to point out that such acquiescence by the
Chinese Government in the lawless proceedings of their own
nationals cannot be regarded as being in harmony with the letter
or the spirit of the stipulations contained in article 2 of the
Pact of Paris.”
Repeated to Peiping.
