793.003/705
The Under Secretary of State (Castle) to the British Ambassador (Lindsay)
My Dear Mr. Ambassador: Referring to the summary of recent correspondence between His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and the British Minister to China in regard to extraterritoriality negotiations, dated May 19, 1931, which you were so good as to hand to me on May 20,61 I am pleased to say that the views expressed in this summary are substantially in accord with the views of the Department of State.
The Department notes with particular interest the statement of the position of the British Government as found in the penultimate paragraph of the summary, as follows:
“While His Majesty’s Government would if necessary countenance a Treaty reserving only Tientsin and a wide Shanghai area, an offer to surrender Hankow and Canton should only be made as a final step in securing a Treaty which the Chinese Government would definitely accept. His Majesty’s Government would not wish to put themselves in the position of having offered to surrender Hankow and Canton without having at the same time secured a definite treaty containing adequate safeguards.”
With this view the Department of State finds itself in complete concurrence.
With the summary under reference before it, the Department has drafted a new formula which it has been on the eve of submitting simultaneously through your Embassy to the British Foreign Office for consideration and by telegram to the American Minister to China for consideration in conference with Sir Miles Lampson, which it hoped might be deemed worth proposing to the Chinese, providing for the reservation of all four of the areas which have been under discussion.
However, the Department is just now in receipt of telegrams from the American Minister to China which indicate that Sir Miles Lampson has proposed to the Chinese Minister for Foreign Affairs a formula with regard to reserved areas which cannot but disclose to the Chinese that the British negotiators are prepared to dispense with the reservation of Hankow and Canton.
Under these circumstances, the Department abandons its intention to submit for present consideration a new formula designed to effect reservation of the four areas and expresses the hope that, in having proposed to the Chinese, though tentatively, a formula which involves [Page 868] the non-reservation of Hankow and Canton, the British negotiators will have, at the same time, obtained from the Chinese negotiators a commitment to a definite treaty containing adequate safeguards.
I am [etc.]
- Not printed.↩