793.94/1831: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Minister in Switzerland (Wilson), at Geneva
123. Consulate’s 120, September 22, 4 p.m., and 123, September 22, 6 p.m.; your 156, September 22, 11 p.m.
Responding to inquiries which have been formally and informally made concerning the American attitude in this matter, you may first deliver to the President of the League Council the following note:53
“I have received from the American Minister at Berne the copy of the resolution of the Council of the League of Nations which you transmitted to him.54
I have noted the two parts of this resolution and the fact that they have been embodied in a note which you have addressed to the Governments of Japan and China.
I assure you that the Government of the United States is in wholehearted sympathy with the attitude of the League of Nations as expressed in the Council’s resolution and will dispatch to Japan and China notes along similar lines.
I have already urged cessation of hostilities and a withdrawal from the present situation of danger and will continue earnestly to work for the restoration of peace.”
For the reasons I gave in my telephone conversation with you, I am much troubled in regard to the proposition of an inquiry committee insofar as I understand it (see your 156 and Consulate’s 126). In my opinion, the proposition of creating from the outside an investigation committee for the China-Japan situation will not conduce to Japanese acceptance of our efforts on behalf of a peaceful solution of the situation. I very much fear, on the contrary, that the proposition, by inflaming Japan’s nationalistic spirit behind the men leading the militaristic movement in Manchuria, will make more difficult Baron Shidehara’s efforts and those of the other members of the Japanese Government who are peacefully disposed toward restoring peace and withdrawing from the existing untenable position. As proposed, the inquiry committee differs widely and radically from an impartial commission which is chosen by both parties in a controversy in accordance with methods already adopted in numerous well-known conciliation treaties. This latter type of inquiry was suggested by me in 1929 in the case of the Soviet Union and China, but this, while much less offensive than the present suggestion to national pride, [Page 49] even was opposed by Japan and failed of adoption by Russia and China.
This Government has every desire in its efforts to solve this difficulty to work along lines in harmony with those the League of Nations is following. There is no difference with your view of the facts insofar as such have been communicated to the Department, but it is felt here that the Japanese Foreign Minister, probably together with his Government’s civilian members, is earnestly working toward accomplishing a peaceful solution, and this Government is anxious lest their task be made more difficult through the arousing of false national pride. This Government thoroughly appreciates the invitation to sit on the League Council and on the special committee, but thinks that American assistance in the solution probably will be more effective if the United States works along the line to which it has already committed itself, namely, of independent conversations. Beginning Sunday morning, the 20th, the Department has repeatedly had conversations with both the Japanese Ambassador and the Chinese Chargé. As there may be a divergence of views concerning methods, for example such as respecting an investigating committee, it is my feeling that I should retain for this Government a degree of independence of action. In summary, the policy which, in my view, will be most effective for the United States Government under the difficult conditions involved in this case is, first, to urge, by diplomatic means and acting according to any similar methods used by the League of Nations, that Japan and China themselves effect a settlement through direct negotiation; second, in the event this method proves ineffective, making outside action necessary, to favor China and Japan’s submitting to machinery set up in the League of Nations Covenant, to which they both are parties and to which China already has appealed and which has already begun action; and, finally, should it develop for any reason that this line is impracticable, to consider the machinery of article 7 of the Washington Nine-Power Treaty of February 6, 1922, or action such as may be practicable under the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact.