Foreign Relations of the United States, Diplomatic Papers, 1932, The Far East, Volume III

793.94/3999½

Memorandum of Trans-Atlantic Telephone Conversation⁶⁷

February 6, 1932, 2:30 p.m.

Sir John: Hello, is that you, Mr. Stimson? Simon here, I am speaking from Geneva.

Secretary: Yes, I know that.

Sir John: I want to say that the Council of the League today did not take up this Japanese-Chinese thing at all. They didn’t deal with it at all. I think it was very wise because I think we need not get things more exciting but the grounds upon which they were prepared not to take it up was that the good offices of the four powers interested in the International Settlement were still available and that discussion might still be going on. I will express my own view to you before you tell me your view. I do think it is very desirable that we should keep on having this sort of discussion. I have just had the Japanese Ambassador here and he certainly takes that view. He is very definite in assuring me that what the Japanese are wanting to do in Shanghai is merely to help their marines and to clear up a dangerous situation for the whole Settlement and I hope that we may get assurances according to that. The Japanese Government will be prepared to discuss everything with us, together.

Secretary: Now, Sir John, I have quite a different view and I want to talk to you very frankly about it. However, I will tell you first what has happened. This morning I have had word from Tokyo from our Ambassador there who says that your Ambassador and the French Ambassador are communicating the same thing to their respective Governments.⁶⁸ The substance of it is that the Japanese military, naval and Foreign Office authorities are trying to carry out a program involving an immediate cessation of hostilities in the Shanghai area. They are now ready to do that: cessation of hostilities; the creation of a neutral zone, but they are sending land forces to the extent of a division and a third of another division and they say that these land forces will replace the sailors in that portion of the region outside of the Settlement in Shanghai which is predominantly occupied by Japanese. They ask that this arrangement be carried out from Shanghai and be not given the appearance of having been forced by a pressure from Washington and London and the other places and by the local authorities at Shanghai and they ask that we authorize the local authorities at Shanghai, the Consuls General, to negotiate this. Well, in other words, they desire to save their face as much as possible.

Sir John: Now that situation has a very good side.

Secretary: Yes, I think it has. It amounts to the carrying out of the first part of our program in part, so far as it saves the Japanese from a fight which they have been carrying on rather unsuccessfully and, on the other hand, from the benefit of the objective we are working for. It would save a large land operation which might involve a much greater sacrifice of life and might involve continued peril to the Settlement.

Sir John: I am afraid—

Secretary: It would have some advantages to us.

Sir John: Because you mean we should not get involved?

Secretary: It would have the advantages of an immediate truce and it would avoid what we have been afraid of—that the Japanese were intending to land this force further down the River, march it over land and attack the Chinese in considerable force outside the Settlement, possibly driving them against our end of the Settlement. It would certainly avoid that if it was accomplished as they say they seek to do it now, namely, through a truce or an agreement with the Chinese.

Sir John: They want us to help them to make a truce with the Chinese?

Secretary: Yes. My position is this. I have no objection to this being tried—a truce being worked out this way by the local authorities along the lines we have suggested—but I am unwilling to have it give any recognition to a permanent occupation by the Japanese.

Sir John: I quite agree with you.

Secretary: The local authorities should be watched on that point and also on the point of preserving the open port during the future, which is involved now under many circumstances and operations, and they should also preserve the point we have already been insisting on, namely, that the International Settlement should not be used as a base of operations.

Sir John: How do they propose to introduce their new forces?

Secretary: They propose, at present, to introduce them through the Settlement, but through the end of the Settlement known as Hongkew—

Sir John: To the north?

Secretary: No, to the east, the Japanese end. I consider that the question is largely a matter to be left with the local authorities. It might be good and it might be bad—that method. It might be good if it was arranged with the consent of the Chinese for the purpose of replacing the present Japanese sailors. It would be bad if it was allowed to take the form of using the Settlement as a base for new operations. There is great danger that the Chinese would regard it in the latter light.

Sir John: It is really additional troops.

Secretary: Yes, it is really additional troops, about twelve thousand additional troops; a division and a third. So far as I know they are only going to remove a small portion. They are likely to leave the larger portion there for an indefinite period. I want to say something more. I am willing and I proposed to instruct Mr. Cunningham, our Consul General, that he might go ahead to negotiate with the others on these lines if it came up, but I want to reserve our full rights in the following respects.

Sir John: I think I will get this taken down.

Secretary: Provided that you agree.

Sir John: I quite follow, and we must get the French and Italians, the Italians anyway.

Secretary: I don’t want anything done which amounts to an approval of the past—what has been done in the past—what I mean is I want to reserve the right, after further consultation with you, to make a statement of our disapproval of what has taken place in the past in case after further conference or otherwise it appears desirable. Now, I want to say this about what you said in the beginning and about your answer which I received yesterday through London.⁶⁹ My trouble with your suggestion about continuing the negotiations was that it took away from the moral disapproval that I thought we should otherwise show. I don’t think it is dignified to go on negotiating with Japan after she has refused the essence of our proposal. The essence of our proposal was that there should be a complete cessation of hostilities. China agreed unconditionally; Japan not only did not agree completely to that proposition but she has gone on sending in additional troops and the excuse for these additional troops is not satisfactory to my mind.

Sir John: It increases the area of conflict.

Secretary: Yes and we all of us here felt very strongly that it was better to end up the correspondence between our countries and Japan by a simple statement to that effect, saying that we had offered a proposal that was fair, and that we all agreed to as fair, and that Japan had rejected it, while China had accepted it and we were sorry; that we would leave it at that point and not be going on with the suggestion about the Manchurian Commission to leave it open for a further snub from Japan. That was—

Sir John: Well, doesn’t that come to this, the first past and the middle part of the draft which Atherton discussed was sent to you. If you have it before you it begins: “For an immediate cessation of hostilities on the part of both China and Japan and avoidance of further sacrifice of life et cetera”.

Secretary: You need not read it as I have it before me.

Sir John: Only it seems to be very much in line with what you are saying.

Secretary: Oh, that is all right.

Sir John: You agree to paragraph one?

Secretary: Yes. Now the part that we are not in agreement on was the proposition that we should go on with the further suggestion about the Commission of Inquiry set up under the League of Nations, and the reason was this. Are you on?

Sir John: I hear you very well.

Secretary: Our reason is this: the chief trouble is that it gives Japan a new proposal to refuse again. In this country we feel that we have gone to the extreme limit in making suggestions and that it is time to stop and leave her in the wrong.

Sir John: Have in mind, Mr. Stimson, that we have got to keep something or other going and it greatly helps for the moment for some discussion with the Council of the League. How are you going to combine the two paragraphs that you agree with, with what you tell me first about Japan’s plan?

Secretary: The two things are entirely separate. I was going to suspend all communication for the present. I was not going to send any draft until you got back to London or until after the truce had been arranged. Just let me explain a moment.

Sir John: We did not formally declare there was a break, but you would not put forth any statement at the moment.

Secretary: The news which we have received from Tokyo this morning and the request which Japan has made supersedes any statement made today.

Sir John: I think that is quite right. I have not yet received that message but I will get it, and then we should all be at one. Your idea is don’t make any public statement; that there is nothing more that we can do. Wait until the truce is drawn up but guard yourself against encouragement to go into their truce and at the same time and at the proper time publish these two paragraphs we have been going over.

Secretary: Either that or some new version brought up to date.

Sir John: I quite follow. For the moment Japan has requested that nothing in the shape of further representations be made from Washington or London to Tokyo; that Japan is making representations to us through the local authorities at Shanghai.

Secretary: I mean she is representing that these negotiations be carried out by the truce.

Well now, Sir John, let me try to make this clear. What I mean is this morning after we had prepared a reply to you on this paper that lies before you there came this new suggestion from Tokyo. The new suggestion involved a request that we keep silent while the truce was being arranged locally at Shanghai. Now, we are willing to do that temporarily to give them a chance to make a truce, provided the local authorities preserve the three points that I mentioned to you: no precedent for permanent occupation and the open port and no use of the Settlement as a base, but we also on our part want to have them to appraise the whole situation after they have made this effort at the truce and to see what we will do then in the way of a statement which will finally sum up our moral position before the world. That is what we will have to talk over with you later. Just let me say this. You naturally are concerned with your relations with the League in Geneva and you see the difficulties there. We are concerned with the public opinion of this country on the moral issue towards Japan and we have to preserve our freedom with respect to that and it is very serious. I believe that the whole movement by Japan, represented by this proposal this morning, has come because she has been beaten. She has found the whole public opinion of the world against her, particularly the solid alignment of Britain and America, followed by France and Italy. She has been unable to drive the Chinese forces out in the easy way she expected. All of that has brought her to a realization that she has bitten off more than she can chew.

Sir John: Certainly her sailors—

Secretary: Her sailors have and the Government have, and the information which we get this morning is that the Government realizes that fact and they have had a serious crisis there. They have a monetary, a financial crisis on them. We don’t want to give her any way out of the moral impasse that she has gotten into on the moral question of Shanghai by any tacit or express approval that can come out of any arrangement or anything we may say in our notes to her. That in our opinion entirely overrides the importance of keeping in touch with her on those last two paragraphs of your note. I don’t like the idea of trying to hang on to her coat tails in a discussion which she has already treated with scant respect.

Sir John: That is how I feel about it. You say, quite truly, that I am looking at it from this end. Of course Ave must remember that the Council of the League is also rather affronted at the way Japan has behaved, and I think it is desirable that you and I should make the most of the opportunity which has been created and shouldn’t have a certain action taken by the Council of the League which might interfere with the proper settlement. Now I want to keep the Council of the League quiet. I told them today that I didn’t think it was necessary for them to pass a resolution because the powers, America and ourselves and the others, were to make a declaration like you say, as all we desire is to get the fighting stopped and if this offer of Japan’s is a means of getting that done, I agree with you altogether and I will give orders to our man and you can give orders to yours, but in the meantime agree that we won’t publish anything, and we will leave the thing as it is with nothing said.

Secretary: I think, as I understand you, that is right. I think for the present we should keep quiet as to any reply to the Japanese note or the Japanese communication to us the other day.

Sir John: Right, I agree with you.

Secretary: On their part, I hope the League will keep quiet with any inflammatory resolutions on their part, but I don’t want anything done on the other hand which would imply approval either by the League or us of what has been done and, in the third place, I don’t want to give Japan another opportunity to snub us by holding out any new suggestions about the Manchurian Commission of Inquiry.

Sir John: I am sure that Japan attaches much more importance to the Manchurian side of this than she does to anything else.

Secretary: I know that; I think your suggestion about the Commission of Inquiry is a valuable one but there is no hurry about making it because they cannot get there for nearly a month and there may be many opportunities before then to make that suggestion. To make it at present in this note of ours would, on the other hand, give a dangerous opportunity for Japan to confuse the moral issue.

Sir John: I understand that we will tell our man in Shanghai to cooperate with yours in trying to work out the truce locally and neither you nor I will make any public statement at present. I shall keep the Council of the League from doing anything rash or provocative and we shall hear in a day or two how things are working out.

Secretary: I see. Well that, I think, covers mainly what I want to say to you. When will you be back in London?

Sir John: I will probably be in Geneva until Thursday or Friday.⁷⁰ I am going to speak at the Disarmament Conference on Monday and I shall probably be there until Wednesday or Thursday or Friday. Mr. MacDonald is getting on very well.

Secretary: I am very glad to hear that.

Sir John: I am in touch with him all the time.

We have a man here, I think his name is Wilson, who has asked me whether I would like to talk with him about the Japanese-Chinese situation. I think he is one of your men here at the League.

Secretary: Yes, he is our American Minister to Switzerland.

Sir John: Had I better talk with him about it—how matters stand —or is it just between you and me?

Secretary: I am perfectly willing that you should talk with him on any matter that you or he wants to talk about, but in case of any important decision, you call me up on the telephone.

Sir John: I shall do that. What I like about your plan or your whole scheme is that it keeps us well away from this question about economic things and all of Article 16. I think it is wise to keep away from that.

Secretary: We have to; we are outside the League.

Sir John: I don’t think that sort of thing is the way to do it.

Secretary: What I think I can hardly breathe aloud. I am willing to keep Japan guessing as to what we are going to do but that I don’t discuss, it is a little dangerous over the telephone even. Now, if anything should come up there is only one thing in what you have just said in summing this up which I want to just make this remark about. My proposition was that we do not send any more communications to Japan during these two days. You went a little bit further and said that we would not make any public statements. I have no intention of making a public statement just now, but a situation might come up where something might have to be said for our situation here. While I don’t expect to say it and while I should try to speak to you beforehand, that is the only difference that I see at all. My reason for this is that it helps me very much to study the Council of the League if the thing remains as it is. They suggested that we were disinteresting ourselves and could do no more. There is much more risk that something rather striking might be done here.

Sir John: I see that perfectly and I shall remember that.

67. Between Mr. Stimson in Washington and Sir John Simon in Geneva, February 6, 1932, 2:30 p.m. Memorandum made in the Department of State for its own use; not an agreed record of the conversation.
68. See telegram No. 47, February 6, 7 p.m., from the Ambassador in Japan, Foreign Relations, Japan, 1931–1941, vol. i, p. 183.
69. See telegram No. 53, February 5, 11 p.m., from the Chargé” in Great Britain, p. 228.
70. February 11 or 12.