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

793.94/5094: Telegram

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

Shanghai, April 23, 1932—2 p.m.
[Received April 23—7:27 a.m.]

Department’s 147, April 20, 6 p.m.;⁸⁹ my April 21, 2 p.m. from Shanghai and Department’s 149, April 22, 5 p.m.⁹⁰

1. Identic message communicated to the Secretary from Shanghai, April 19, 3 p.m.,⁹¹ insofar as it related to responsibility of Mixed Commission was in line with views of Lampson and myself though in conversation with him on Monday, April 18, prior to my departure for Nanking and before we knew that our opinion was to be asked, it had from the first been our intention to put our respective Consuls General upon this Commission as our personal representatives and we felt that in view of all of the conditions here we did not wish to impose upon them or their colleague serving on this Commission the responsibility of deciding which conditions at Shanghai would permit of the withdrawal of the Japanese forces. It was our feeling that the last paragraph of annex 4 of the draft agreement gives sufficient latitude and discretion to the Commission to enable it to do even that if it so desired but the Commission was free and could not be forced by the Chinese to accept such a responsibility.

2. I have complete text of draft resolution in 14 paragraphs as supplied to me by Lampson.

3. I returned to Shanghai yesterday and saw Lampson at 4:30. He had just been to see the Japanese Minister. The latter informed Lamp-son that paragraph 11 was unacceptable to the Japanese Government as it objected to any third party being given even by implication the power to decide when Japanese troops should be evacuated from Shanghai. Objection was made specifically to the words “competence to declare”. In the course of the conversation which ensued Lampson and Shigemitsu examined annex 4 of the draft agreement and Shigemitsu pointed out that the last paragraph appeared to authorize the Commission to perform the function which the League desired. Lamp-son then suggested adding the following words to the second paragraph of annex 4 in order to clarify this matter: “and is authorized to call attention to any neglect in the carrying out of the provisions of any of the three articles mentioned above”. Shigemitsu gave Lampson his word that he would support agreement conformable with his Government if we could get the Chinese Government to accept it in lieu of the phraseology of paragraph 11 of the resolution.

4. I suggested to Lampson that we get Quo in and put the matter before him. Quo came and after some discussion in the course of which we pointed out to him that the second paragraph of annex 4 of the draft agreement thus amended seemed to us to be just as satisfactory as the phraseology of paragraph 11. The Japanese after all merely named the Commission to certify to certain facts but did not thereby impose any obligation on the Japanese Government to act in accordance with the facts so certified. He stated that he was prepared to urge its acceptance upon the Chinese Government. Quo and Lampson left last night by steamer for Nanking and will be there tomorrow morning. They plan to return to Shanghai on Monday April 25th, by air. While in Nanking they will endeavor to persuade Chinese to accept this amendment in lieu of paragraph 11 and if successful will notify me by telegraph and I promised to urge Shigemitsu to take the matter up with his Government.

5. This has all been communicated to the British Foreign Secretary by Lampson with the additional suggestion that paragraph 11 of the draft resolution be amended by dropping all of the words beginning “competence to declare” to the end of the paragraph and substituting therefore “authority to call attention to any neglect in the carrying out of the provisions of any of the articles mentioned above”.

6. Repeated to Geneva.

Johnson

89. Not printed; it reported telegram No. 84, April 19, 9 p.m., from the Minister in Switzerland, p. 703.
90. Latter not printed; it reported telegrams No. 85 [86?], April 21, 4 p.m., and No. 87, April 22, 1 p.m., from the Minister in Switzerland, pp. 706 and 712.
91. See telegram No. 88, April 23, 2 p.m., from the Minister in Switzerland, infra.