Office of the Historian

793.94/2540: Telegram

The Secretary of State to the Consul General at Shanghai (Cunningham)

[Paraphrase]
Washington, November 11, 1931.

For the Minister: Your November 9, noon.

(1)
The action of the Department in connection with the memorandum under reference is regarded here as a confidential communication from this Government to the Japanese Government. None of the foreign representatives here has been given a copy of the text, and instructions were sent the Consul at Geneva to communicate only the substance, as outlined to you in my telegram of November 7, 2 p.m.,95 to Drummond for his own confidential information and for limited and discreet communication by him to other League Council Members. The Department is informed that Drummond intends for the present, for reasons of his own, to inform only the members of the Committee of Five, but not all the members of the Council.
(2)
The Department for these reasons desires that you do not communicate the substance of the telegram of November 7, 2 p.m., as suggested by you, to the Chinese Acting Minister for Foreign Affairs, but prefers the Chinese Government to receive this information [Page 422] through the Chinese representative on the Council if, when, and as, on his own initiative, Drummond may see fit to impart it to him.
(3)
You may repeat the telegram of November 7, 2 p.m., to the Consul General at Nanking for his own confidential information.
Stimson
  1. Not printed.↩