793.003/566: Telegram
The Ambassador in Great Britain (Dawes) to the Secretary of State
[Received March 21—11 a.m.]
81. Contents of Department’s 71, March 16, 6 p.m. conveyed to Foreign Office which by informal letter dated March 20 expresses appreciation and states:
“Telegrams received from Lampson indicate that he has made unexpectedly rapid progress in the negotiations. By concentrating on details first and leaving major issues for subsequent negotiation succeeded in inducing the Chinese Government to agree to practically all the safeguards that we want except reserved areas, as to which the Chinese Minister for Foreign Affairs is at present inflexible. As to these areas, we fully realize that the interests of other powers are closely concerned and may not be exactly the same as ours. We therefore entirely share the view of the State Department that the negotiations particularly on this point, conducted by each power should take into consideration the special interests of the other most interested powers. The reference in the instructions to Lampson to the International Settlement of Shanghai was intended to indicate what, having regard to purely British interests, was the final point beyond which no further concession would be made.
Lampson expects that the negotiations will shortly reach a stage when, all other points having been disposed of, he will be in a position to offer to surrender criminal jurisdiction in return for the exclusion of certain areas.
We are telegraphing to Washington in the above sense and instructing the Ambassador to explain the position as above described to the State Department.76 I would add that the position reached in our negotiations appears to render unnecessary the adoption of the procedure proposed by the State Department for dissolving a possible deadlock.
With regard to the above matters referred to by the State Department, the position is as follows:
Evocation and co-judges. The first concession which Lampson made was in fact not evocation but co-judges. He had contemplated giving up co-judges last, but seems to have been influenced by the wording of the latest American draft, a copy of which was communicated by Atherton77 to Wellesley on January 28th.”
See Department’s confidential instruction 640, January 20, 1931.78
“Immovable property. We do not anticipate that there will be any serious difficulty in obtaining safeguards as regards rights in immovable property. We have never abandoned the idea of obtaining such guarantees.”