Papers relating to the foreign relations of the United States, 1931, The Far East, Volume III

793.94/1853½

Memorandum of Trans-Atlantic Telephone Conversation⁴⁶

September 23, 1931, 11:20 a.m.

Secretary: Is this Mr. Davis?

Davis: Yes, Mr. Secretary. I have put in a call for the President. I called on the Chairman of the Council and talked with him. I prepared a cable to the President, promising to call him. I did finish my work on the Financial Committee Monday and he asked me to stay here yesterday and today on this Chinese-Japanese situation. I know a lot of these men and I want to speak to them about that.

Secretary: Tell me what the nature [is?]. I have not the slightest objection to your telling me what you find there.

Davis: I never in my entire life have seen a situation which I think is so loaded with dynamite and where there is such great opportunity to do something perfectly wonderful. These men here in the Council are trying to battle with the situation. The reports are most alarming. Japan has gone down to the wall and here they look upon it as a conflict between Shidehara and the military clique in Japan.

Secretary: I understand that.

Davis: I understand you have all the details of this thing. Massigli, who is representing France on the Council came to me and he said there is only one way that I can see to stop Japan now to help overcome the military clique and that would be for the United States to take a very dramatic step here and to come and sit on the Council of the League and help compose this thing. I have talked to Hugh Wilson and they all feel that it would really solve the situation. Here is what I want to do. In disarmament one of the difficulties is how to get a formula on trading with the aggressor which would satisfy us and satisfy the other people. This has been very difficult. In getting a formula in the future, some sort of machinery is going to be necessary and I cannot imagine in a crisis of this kind where the Kellogg-Briand Pact has been violated and particularly where the Nine Power Treaty in China is involved (? a better opportunity than) for us to accept an invitation to work with a committee and sit at the Council. Of course, they are talking about your going on a committee. I think it would be the most dramatic thing. I think it would save disarmament and if you do not do it there is no use of holding the disarmament conference, in my judgment. I could not resist the temptation of doing anything I could to be helpful in any possible way.

Secretary: I appreciate the seriousness of the situation and I am now in conference on the telegrams coming in this morning, trying to work out the situation, but as you say it seems to be an issue between the peaceful civil elements of the government and the military, and one of the things that is to be avoided is the excitement of national feeling behind the military elements in Japan. We are trying to work out a way by which we can show our cooperation and sympathy with what the League is trying to do and yet not obscure⁴⁷

Davis: It is a very old thing. It seems to me that it is an opportunity to solve this.

Secretary: I know something about this committee of investigation. They have suggested a committee of investigation. I think they have followed a false analogy there. I suggested two years ago a committee of investigation but of a different type.⁴⁸ I think to try to impose a committee of investigation consisting of military officers upon Japan in the way that the telegram suggested would excite——

Davis: I think the United States should throw the weight of its influence by joining the Council in proposing this investigation. That is what they all speak of. I talked to Grandi⁴⁹ and …⁵⁰ last night. They say that Great Britain and France feel that the only way to combat it is to get the Japanese to agree to it.

Secretary: I was very much afraid of the kind of proposition they are submitting for an investigating committee by the outside nations to investigate Japan. What has become of that proposal?

Davis: It was a committee appointed by the Council that the United States would join.

Secretary: I think that would be a mistake. Two years ago I, in the case of China and Russia, suggested an investigating committee of neutrals appointed by the two parties involved. That is an entirely different situation. That avoids the danger of exciting resentment on the part of the two parties involved or either of them. I think this one is a mistake in the form that they have taken and I think it would do more harm than good. I think it would arouse all the national spirit of Japan behind their military people who have gone off on this expedition.

Davis: Hugh Wilson has just come in.

Secretary: I have been trying to get him all the morning.

Davis: I am doing a little irregular thing here. I started this by really putting in a call for the President.

Secretary: I have been at work on this here already under the treaties in which my country is a party and I am doing the best I can, but it is a ticklish situation on which I want all the light I can get.

Davis: I knew you were working with it and would understand the spirit under which I am calling.

Secretary: I have been in conference with my people here in the Department all morning to determine how to show our sympathy with what the League is doing and carry on ourselves.

Wilson: Hello, Mr. Secretary. There are some further developments. The small committee of the big powers is meeting. (1) They have requested Drummond to notify me that they have determined to send a committee of investigation to Manchuria. (2) They have determined to send diplomatic notes to Japan and China.

Secretary: Are those notes to follow the form which the Council adopted last year?

Wilson: They have not determined the form yet. (3) They want to know whether you will name a representative to sit on the small committee.

Secretary: It sounds to me as if they have acted first and then ask us to sit and accept the responsibility for what they have already done.

Wilson: The only thing they will announce this afternoon is the committee of investigation.

Secretary: That is the one thing I am most disturbed about because I think they have gone off wrong on the character of the committee and the source of its powers. Two years ago in the China-Russia trouble I suggested a committee of investigation but I very carefully modeled it upon the forms of the committee which we were using in the treaties of conciliation all over the world, and that was a committee to be selected by the two powers involved in the controversy. It was not a committee from the outside imposed upon those two powers. The present committee, in my opinion, I am afraid will be resented by Japan as an attempt by the outside nations to impose an investigation from without and will ally all of the nationalistic elements in Japan against Shidehara in favor of the military elements which have done this. I think they have gone at it in the wrong way. For instance, they may be following the precedent set in the Greek-Bulgarian case,⁵¹ but that was an entirely different situation. In that case it was the determination of a geographical fact and they could send military officers on the subject to virtually draw a line. Here on the contrary it is a judicial ascertainment of a lot of political causes and I do not think either the method of the choice of the committee or the character of the personnel they suggest is appropriate and I think it would give Japan a very good reason for opposing it.

Wilson: I understand perfectly.

Secretary: Under those circumstances I do not think I could dream of authorizing a member to sit on that committee where we would be faced with a fait accompli in which we have had no voice or suggestion. It is contrary to the way in which I have been going at it here.

Wilson: The Council is meeting at 6:45. It is now 20 minutes to 6:00 o’clock. Can I tell your views to Drummond before that meeting.

Secretary: Yes, you can do that.

Castle:⁵² I think you ought to put up your idea very strongly to Drummond immediately on the chance that they might be willing to change the type of the committee.

Secretary: I am willing that you put up what I say very strongly and confidentially to Drummond so that he can put it before the committee. I have been at work all the morning here trying to work out a way by which we can assist you without running into your errors. I think they are making some mistakes that I do not want to run into.

Wilson: If it would seem to accord with your line of thought, they will probably call off the Council meeting this afternoon.

Secretary: What I was thinking of, subject to the approval of the President with whom I have not yet talked, was to send a cable to the effect that we were in accord with what you have done in the note that you sent me a copy of. That is the one addressed to both China and Japan yesterday, asking them to stop hostilities and as far as possible restore the status quo. This question of investigation in oriental matters is a very delicate one. People in the Orient like to work those things out by negotiation between the two parties and one of the things I noticed two years ago is being repeated here. The action by the outside powers has driven China and Japan together. The papers this morning report that Japan is now ready to negotiate with China. That will follow almost always when outside powers take a hand in the Orient, and you must bear that in mind and you do not want to commit yourselves so tight to a method of remedy to which they do not agree. You may end up by making the situation worse than it is now.

Wilson: I think that is sound.

Secretary: I am trying to back you up and yet I run into that mistake. Norman Davis asked me whether we could not have an American sit on the Council. That would have the same objection to which their offer to sit on the committee has. The Council has already acted. We would go into something in which we had no voice in the original statement and furthermore it would run into all of the other objections which exist in America about formal official action on the League. My idea is to cooperate in some wider action having its origin in some treaty provision with which we are associated, such as the Kellogg Pact or the Nine Power Pact. In other words, it seems to me that probably the best thing I can do is to express sympathy and approval with their efforts in a form that can be used publicly, and to reserve my technical cooperation to pull them out of trouble if they got into trouble.

Wilson: I am going to see Drummond now. If he asks me to explain this to his colleagues is it all right to do so?

Secretary: I think you had better do it privately to Drummond. I do not think you had better speak before the committee. Your appearance there would be misinterpreted.

Wilson: But it is a private meeting.

Castle: Even from a private meeting it would leak.

Secretary: You better talk to the Secretary General or the leaders privately. I do not think we can accept service on that particular committee, nor can we accept service on the Council, but I am trying to think of a way, if the emergency arises, we can possibly accept on a broader basis. The thing most important, because I think it is a clear mistake, is the character of the investigation that that committee is apparently determined to make. I think that is going to make trouble. I do not want that to get to Japan but you can use it with Drummond.

Wilson: Would you like me to call you back tonight after I talk with Drummond and after the Council meeting?

Secretary: Yes. Let them understand you have talked with me about my views on which I have not yet talked to the President.

Wilson: I will call you within about three hours probably.

46. Between Mr. Stimson in Washington and Mr. Norman H. Davis and Mr. Hugh R. Wilson in Geneva, September 23, 1931, 11:20 a.m.
47. Apparent interruption or poor telephone connection at this point.
48. In dispute between China and the Soviet Union; see Foreign Relations, 1929, vol. ii, pp. 186 ff., especially pp. 242–244.
49. Dino Grandi, Italian representative on the Council of the League of Nations.
50. Blank in original memorandum.
51. Settled by the League of Nations on December 14, 1925, in favor of Bulgaria.
52. William R. Castle, Jr., Under Secretary of State, was evidently present with the Secretary.