793.94/4427
Memorandum by the Under Secretary of State (Castle)
The Italian Ambassador came to see me at my request. I explained to him that when I showed Count Marchetti the proposed protest to the Japanese yesterday we had discussed it to some extent with Sir John Simon by telephone; that we had heard today from London, however, that the British having already protested on the use of the Settlement as a base, they felt that another protest on the same subject would be useless. I told him, however, that the Secretary wanted me to make it quite clear, as long as we had suggested this protest to the Italian Government, that if the Italian Government still felt the [Page 360] protest ought to be made we should be glad to go along with them. The Ambassador got this very clearly. He said that he was not surprised that the British had not been willing to make a strong protest of this kind because he had the feeling that there was a strong sentiment in London against bringing any real vigorous pressure to bear on Japan. He said that the Italians felt that the mentality of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance still remained very strong and that on such a matter as Manchuria, for example, the British had no feeling at all. On the other hand, the British felt they had good trade relations with the Japanese and that if the Japanese put in a strong control in any part of China it would not tend to destroy but rather to help British trade. I said to the Ambassador that this seemed to me a very shortsighted point of view and he agreed, but insisted that was what they were thinking about.