793.94/3758e: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Chargé in Great Britain (Atherton)
43. Please give the following to the Prime Minister as early as possible Sunday morning97 at 10, Downing Street. I have discussed it with him over the telephone this evening. Explain to the Prime Minister that this is merely a rough draft expressing the general idea:
“Your Majesty: The present posture of affairs in China leads me to make a direct appeal to your majesty in what I believe is the sentiment of the people of the United States whom I represent. I have no desire to enter upon the origins of the course of events during the past [Page 129] 4 months. The assurances given by the Japanese Government as to its ultimate aims and that its action is confined solely to the protection of its citizens and their property, have been accepted throughout the world. We are, nevertheless, on the verge of a great war which I am sure does not represent the peace-loving sentiment of the Japanese people any more than it does the sentiment of the whole world.
The government of China, slowly gaining strength after the weakening of long revolution, has been even more sensibly weakened by events of the past 4 months, and chaos is rapidly overcoming that 350,000,000 of humanity with its train of infinite misery and death.
I conceive it to be the object of the Japanese government as well as the wish and endeavor of all other governments, to see the rehabilitation and strengthening of China and the reopening to that nation of the paths of peace and prosperity. No nation in the world can view without anxiety the consequences to all the world and without dismay the prospect of further degeneration of order and further suffering of the Chinese people. The situation is one which must appeal to the sanity and hearts of all the peoples of the world.
With view to contributing to the remedy of this situation I am led to propose to your Majesty and to the Chinese Government that there should be an immediate cessation of all hostilities and all hostile action and that negotiations should at once be established between the Chinese and Japanese governments for the settlement of their outstanding controversies, that such negotiations should be entered into without reservation on either side and conducted in the spirit of the pact of Paris to which we are all signatory, and that in order to assure both sides that these negotiations shall be conducted in the spirit of that pact may I suggest that some minority of representatives of the other governments of the world should participate in such negotiations. The purpose of these negotiations to be not alone the solution of the outstanding controversy but as a part of such solution the strengthening of the Chinese government and the saving of its people from the abyss with which they are faced.”
- January 31.↩