793.94/30583/7
Memorandum of Trans-Atlantic Telephone Conversation97
Secretary: Hello, General. The New York Tribune yesterday made an assertion about you on which I want a denial, if possible. The New York Tribune said that in speaking about the advance on Chinchow, that you had gotten from Alfred Sze and had given to the Japanese, an assurance that the Chinese garrison would withdraw from the Chinchow area.
Dawes: That is an untruth.
Secretary: You had nothing to do with it?
Dawes: Nothing whatever.
Secretary: In the next place they say that you persuaded Matsudaira to be content with a reading of the reservation of the Japanese——
Dawes: What was that?
Secretary: They say that you persuaded Matsudaira to simply take a reservation to the Japanese right of action in this matter in exchange for this assurance of a withdrawal by the Chinese from Chinchow.
Dawes: That is not true.
Secretary: You had nothing to do with that.
Dawes: No.
Secretary: I am going to do battle on the subject and I just wanted to be sure first that there was nothing in it.
Dawes: Absolutely nothing.
Secretary: You see they have gotten the story of what the French Ambassador did in Tokyo and they have you mixed up in it.
Dawes: I knew nothing about it at all. I knew nothing about it until about two or three days afterwards. I had nothing to do with it.
. . . . . . .
- Between Mr. Stimson in Washington and General Dawes in London, December 22, 1931, 4:45 p.m.↩