793.94/2668a: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Great Britain (Dawes)
328. 1. The new memorandum from the Japanese Foreign Office96 (for copy, see my 323, November 10, 5 p.m.97) was received after my 326, November 10, 8 p.m.,98 was prepared and seems to me materially to affect and modify the situation as was outlined in my 326. The Japanese reply is, on its face, in substantial compliance with this Government’s position as taken hitherto. The Japanese now expressly say they have no intention to insist upon the final adjustment of the entire series of controversies they have had with China as a condition precedent to withdrawing Japanese troops to the South Manchuria Railway zone. They say further that the “fundamental principles” they wish to discuss with the Chinese prior to withdrawing are “no more than those that are generally observed in practice in dealings of organized peoples with one another,” and these are described in a way which appears effectually to exclude a Japanese attempt to force a solution of issues not germane to troop withdrawal, like the longstanding issues of the 1915 and other old treaties. If next week there can be applied to the settlement of this situation the statements of the Tokyo memorandum in the plain sense of the meaning of its language, this Government should be perfectly satisfied and the American position under the treaties on peace will be vindicated.
2. However, I believe the solution will not be so easy, for Yoshizawa’s
position at Geneva was different. To the Council he produced
[Page 424]
five points and said these
were insisted upon by his Government as preliminary to Japanese
withdrawal. The points were as follows:99
It was agreed in the long discussions before the Council that the first four of these points were germane to withdrawal, no objection being made by Briand or the others, but Japan insisted, when pressed concerning the fifth point, that a ratification of the old treaties was included. The American position in the November 5 memorandum was thus taken in accordance with the issues presented at Geneva. In spite of the plain language of the Japanese memorandum to me, I fear you will find Japan may renew this contention at Paris in some form or other. Ever since 1915 China has protested that these treaties, having been obtained by duress, must be canceled. Japan, on the contrary, has contended that these treaties could not be so invalidated as they had been formally executed. The United States went formally on record in 1915 to both Japan and China1 to the effect it could recognize no treaties if and insofar as they impaired the principles of Open-Door rights and the integrity of China; and in 1922 Secretary Hughes renewed this reservation at the Washington Conference. (See MacMurray, Treaties, Vol. II, page 1236.)
3. Historically, world public opinion forced Japan in 1922 to recede from the treaties of 1915 so far as Shantung was concerned and to evacuate this Chinese province. Now Japan is faced with a world opinion which is far better organized against it on this same issue of recent occupations in Manchuria. The Kellogg Pact and the Nine-Power Treaty, had they been in effect then, probably would have stood as barriers to such conduct in 1915 as Japan’s in obtaining the 1915 treaties. Furthermore, the aforesaid pacts actually are barriers today to an attempt to validate those 1915 treaties by force. The present problem is to find a method to restore peace and to secure the protection of Japan’s equitable Manchurian rights without both recognizing and validating a claim hitherto rejected by the conscience of the world and also sanctioning a violation now of the Kellogg Pact and the Nine-Power Treaty. The complexities of this position make it obvious that [Page 425] only by a direct and pacific negotiation and agreement between Japan and China can a solution be found.
4. At the Washington Conference in 1922 the world faced a quite similar practical problem in regard to the evacuation of Shantung Province. After several years of prolonged difficulties, China and Japan were persuaded to negotiate a settlement of the Shantung question by using the following devices: First, they agreed to discuss the matter from the sole point of view of the de facto situation and of equity rather than of strict interpretation of legal rights; and, second, Messrs. Hughes and Balfour, or their representatives, were asked to sit during the negotiations as neutral observers. This precedent I have already suggested to Briand, with the statement that I did not desire the suggestion, however, to seem to emanate from this Government. I feel that you should keep this precedent very much in mind. Probably Dooman and/or Ray Atherton can give you a full history.
5. Aside from these troublesome old questions arising from the 1915 coup, I feel that patience and sympathy may well be shown to the desire of Japan for a settlement which will protect its legitimate interests and nationals in Manchuria. This Government feels that Japan unquestionably has been subjected to much harassment and its nationals to much annoyance there and that almost any fair solution preserving on the one hand the guarantees of the Open Door, law and order in that locality, and the Nine-Power Treaty, and vindicating, on the other hand, the treaties on peace, should be welcome.
6. It would definitely be a step in advance, I believe, if Japan and China might be brought at once into negotiations of some sort with or without neutral observers in attendance. From the beginning Japan has urged direct negotiations, and China has agreed to negotiations respecting the safety during evacuation of Japanese lives and property and already has appointed its negotiators. It appears that negotiations might be begun immediately, with the purpose of arranging specifically for the safety during and after evacuation of Japanese lives and property, but that the negotiators should be left to decide what were the pertinent subjects of this objective. If Japan should claim during the course of these negotiations that China’s recognition of any special treaty provision is essential to the immediate object of assuring the safety of Japanese lives and property, the negotiators could then decide if this was so or not. Should China object to any such provision as not being germane to the object of said negotiation, such provision might be referred to a different set of negotiators, whose decision should not provide a condition precedent to evacuation. The Japanese representative on the League Secretariat at Geneva has been holding conversations in Paris and London with Japanese, British, and French officials and has already [Page 426] developed therein a project for two such sets of China-Japan negotiations, and it seems to this Government that Sugimura’s suggestion easily might be developed into a method of procedure as indicated above. I am informed that Sugimura’s suggestion has already been adopted by Yoshizawa who forwarded it to his Government. Should any such plan as the above be adopted, adding neutral observers to these negotiations would appear to be great help in effectuating the purpose of our suggestion. The suggestion in this paragraph is just a snapshot suggestion for you to consider in the light of possible developments in Paris. In my opinion, any suggestion would be far more effective if its origin, instead of being labeled as American, appeared to come from Japan and China themselves.
- Foreign Relations, Japan, 1931–1941, vol. i, p. 39.↩
- Not printed.↩
- Foreign Relations, Japan, 1931–1941, vol. i, p. 41.↩
- Quotation not paraphrased.↩
- See telegram of May 11, 1915, 5 p.m., to the Ambassador in Japan, Foreign Relations, 1915, p. 146.↩