Office of the Historian

793.94/4397: Telegram

The Minister in China (Johnson) to the Secretary of State

Peiping, February 25, 1932—4 p.m.
[Received February 25—8 a.m.]

272. Following from American Consul General, Harbin:

“February 24, noon, No. 20.

1.
At Manchuria Station I learned that there was no belief that the Soviet military have been concentrating any extraordinary forces near the border, that there was a belief that the Soviet régime was still adhering to its policy of refraining under all circumstances from military action unless its territory was invaded, that a considerable amount of rolling stock of the Chinese Eastern Railway, including locomotives, had been sent into Siberia and not returned and that shipments of soya beans into Siberia were being made.
2.
At Hailar Chinese military and Mongol officials, including the second Southwestern Kueifu, the Fu Tu Tung of Hulun Peier, who is old and ill, and who is the father of Ling Sheng, the Hulun Peier delegate of Mukden, informed me that the leading Mongols of Barga are enthusiastically in favor of an independent Manchurian government with Pu Yi at its head but not so in case a Chinese heads the new government. I believe that the older Mongol leaders are sincere in this respect and that the younger radical anti-Chinese leaders, who favored Soviet Russia, have lost faith in the latter because it did not oppose Japanese encroachments on the railway and at Harbin and [Page 440] are now willing to accept Japanese aid to lessen Chinese domination and to improve their status. The official Mongol leaders stated that they wanted peace and quiet, that they were weary of the Republican Government with its incessant civil wars and attending miseries and that they desired the return of the Ching dynasty, under which the Mongols had enjoyed living.
3.
General Su Ping-wen, commander of the railway guard troops at Hailar, informed me that he was obeying the orders of General Ma Chan-shan and that on February 22nd the Manchouli representative of the Harbin-Japanese Military Mission had lunched with him at Hailar and had urged him to be patient toward the new government.
4.
Conditions were and are quiet along the western line of the railway, and near Hailar and Manchuria Station where there are few Japanese and Koreans and it is not anticipated that there will be any disturbances in that section for the time being. I was reliably informed that there was no expressed anti-Japanese feeling on the part of the Chinese in these two towns and the Japanese Consul Yamasaki at Manchuria, upon whom I called, did not complain to me in regard to the situation or to any mistreatment of Japanese or their trade.”

For the Minister:
Perkins