793.94/4144¾
Memorandum of Trans-Atlantic Telephone Conversation46
Secretary: Hello, Sir John.
Sir John: I am sorry you are being kept from your lunch. I have had my conversation, since we spoke last, with the Prime Minister in his sick room with three or four of my other colleagues. We are all of one mind—that we want to take the course which will be in accordance with your country’s general scheme and we think that we shall probably have to do it in the way I told you, in connection with the League of Nations, and I am prepared to go over to Geneva to get the whole thing in shape as quickly as possible. I have some comments to make on your first draft and I propose to give them to Atherton if you agree and he will transmit them to you. Will that be all right?
Secretary: Yes, that will be all right. May I say something after you get through in general on what you told me this morning?
Sir John: It will probably take some hours to get these suggestions through to Mr. Atherton, but you will get them in the course of eight or nine hours. Meanwhile, we have been preparing something to suggest to the League at Geneva, putting it in the same way as yours exactly. It brings in the Nine-Power Pact and the Kellogg Pact and the whole thing. We wanted to say two things to you. You will find that one of our suggestions to you is not at all to give up the reference to Manchuria but not to put it in in the way you do because we think that the representations which have been laid down should be made immediately under Shanghai and the International Settlement. We don’t want to give up the other part but we don’t want to put it in the forefront. The other thing is this. I don’t know how your information stands but we here are very much concerned to see that the tone and the substance of our communications enlarged the area of fighting rather than stopped it. Because we have to ask ourselves the answer to our representations, it is very unpleasant. No doubt you are thinking of the same thing.
Secretary: I was thinking on that point. My note was not addressed primarily to Japan, it was addressed to the other members of the Nine-Power group.
Sir John: Which would include Japan.
Secretary: Which would include Japan, but it was for the purpose of serving a notice as to the future rather than getting any immediate reply.
Sir John: Quite so, we agree with you about that. That is the [Page 342] scheme we have in mind. I will let Atherton have one or two suggestions of ours. I will give him also an outline of what I have proposed for Geneva and after our conference on Wednesday morning, I will start for Geneva at once and I will be able to get a definite conclusion there quite quickly.
Secretary: I think, if I understand you clearly, that is all right, except I want to say something now if you are through. What I wanted particularly to say to you while I have you here is this. I should feel very badly if you did not accept the broad statements as to the policy of the Nine-Power Treaty which I put in primarily for the purpose of an appeal to China.
Sir John: I follow you entirely, Mr. Stimson, about that.
Secretary: There are these dangers that we must look out for. If we served a declaration which did not, at least by implication, cover the full scope of the Nine-Power Pact and, therefore, the Manchurian issue, every journalist in the world would at once, the next morning, say that Britain and America had yielded the Manchurian issue to Japan.
Sir John: I don’t mean to do that.
Secretary: I could not accept that. We should also lose the moral issue in it and we should arouse the nationalists to probable aggression against foreigners in China. There is a very real direct cash value to all of us in the policy towards China which I endeavored to put out in the introductory two or three articles in that representation.
Sir John: That part of it we liked very much.
Secretary: I mean, if on the real issue that is presented by Japanese action, she says that you are too idealistic and we have to take a different attitude towards China—If we do that we lose the faith which China, to this point, has shown in us and that would imperil our own people in China and would do us unmeasured harm in the future, so that is what I am primarily fighting for. Then, in the next place, I wanted to say this. I think any arrangement of the way in which we submitted notes which did not present a united front of Britain and America at least, and, if possible, the other members of the four powers standing together on the Nine-Power Treaty, would lose great force in China. We cannot disguise the fact, though I very greatly regret it, that the League does not inspire fear at present in the Japanese. Japan is much more afraid of a union between you and us than she is of the whole League.
Sir John: I quite see that. That is why I wanted whatever we do to use much the same language in the declarations.
Secretary: I am doing my best to support the League. I have no prejudice against it but every prejudice for it, but I am trying, at the same time, to save the immense momentum that goes with an action between Britain and America on this subject.
[Page 343]Sir John: Yes, but we are very anxious about what the outcome of all this may be. Did you get a message from your Ambassador in Tokyo a few days ago that we had which said that the Ambassadors there all held a strong opinion that several representations would be most unwise.
Secretary: Yes, I have received that and it did not make the impression it would have made on me two months ago. I don’t think they really know, as well as we do, what Japan is really doing.
Sir John: I only wanted to know if you had it. We got a message from our Ambassador saying that the Italian, German and French were all of that opinion.
Secretary: Yes, I have had the same message and I have had it in mind most carefully, but I have also weighed it in comparison with information which I get elsewhere and I have compared it with the record of similar prophecies made in the past and which have been uniformly disappointing.
Sir John: Yes, it is that no doubt.
Secretary: I followed that for some four months. Now, I think what you tell me is very satisfactory.
Sir John: It is the best we can do at the moment. Tomorrow morning I will give to Atherton one or two suggestions on your document. I am not decided whether we can actually join you on the same piece of paper or not. We should like to do so and it would be much more effective no doubt as you say, but, on the other hand, I must remember the position of the Council of the League and I must go back there and do my best to get them to work on a similar line and we will speak again before I go. It ought to be possible to carry the thing through, as we both wish it, at any rate by Friday.
Secretary: I do not see how the League can as a League make a protest on the Nine-Power Treaty and I think there has got to be a separate piece of paper, in other words, you have a separate duty to perform as a signatory of the Nine-Power Treaty and the Pact of Paris, than you have on the League Covenant.
Sir John: I will mention it to the Prime Minister, because several of us here think that if we could be parties to both documents, it would be the best way.
Secretary: I think you should because otherwise it will lose all the force.
Sir John: But I warn you we should lean against the modifications of the way some of your suggestions are put.
Secretary: All right, let me see them, and I will be very open minded on them. I do not see how the League of Nations can make a protest on the Nine-Power Treaty and, to a less extent, I don’t see how [Page 344] it can do it on the Pact of Paris. Now, it is on those two treaties we are making new and very encouraging progress. We think that we are implementing those treaties by what we did in our January 7th note and, if the other powers now do that, we think it will be a long step forward in making effective progress in this entire group of peace treaties. I don’t see how the League can take that step at all and I really think that is the vital point of the whole situation. I think you will have to sign two papers. I think it is very vital.
Sir John: I told you about the other powers to the Nine-Power Treaty because I shall be seeing some of them actually in Geneva.
Secretary: That will be very helpful. Let me ask you about one more thing. Did you make any progress in regard to a note on the present situation of the International Settlement?
Sir John: We think you ought to include it in your document, as well as the principal grounds, for an immediate restoration. It is intimately connected there. That is the situation.
Secretary: In addition to that—that is true—I think that should be included too—but there is this. There will be a delay in your final action on both of these matters until you make your trip to Geneva and, in the meanwhile, this battle will be fought.
Sir John: I will send suggestions on your document before I start for Geneva anyway.
Secretary: Well then, we cannot expect to have that ready or to do anything against it until you have also rounded up the League.
Sir John: I can do that in twenty-four hours.
Secretary: I had this in mind. I wanted to get this across to you although it is a minor matter. The protests which have been made heretofore have all been verbal protests. They have not had any publicity and also we have not made the claim that I think we are entitled to make of pointing out to Japan by using the International Settlement as a base causes damage either directly or by provoking Chinese firing. I think she is making herself liable for the damages to every person of the International Settlement who is injured or who loses property. That would be out of place.
Sir John: The powers who are interested in the International Settlement might make at once a separate representation on that thought.
Secretary: That is exactly my point and that subject would be out of place in our general note, as it is on a higher plane. We should at once protest calling their attention to the damage.
Sir John: To those who are members of the International Settlement by the firing that she is provoking from the Chinese and by the firing she is doing herself.
Secretary: Of course, we have got to look at it with the problem of 1927 in mind when your forces, as well as ours, were sent there to [Page 345] protect the International Settlement. We will say that she is doing something like that now. Of course, it isn’t really the same. What I mean, Sir John, is that some time or other we are going to have a big arbitration case over those damages and I think we ought to lay the foundation for that now.
Sir John: I am quite prepared to help you. Do you mean to draft something about that?
Secretary: I am just drafting that now. I can telegraph it to you tonight.47 In an hour or two probably.
Sir John: You will hear from me tomorrow.
Secretary: Good-bye.