793.94/3655: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Consul at Geneva (Gilbert)
29. Your 35, January 26, 4 p.m., paragraphs numbered 4 and 5. For your confidential information and guidance. The Department, on January 8, instructed the American Consul at Nanking to inform [Page 82] the Foreign Minister orally that “without making any commitment, either affirmative or negative, with regard to its future course of action, which course will depend on developments, the Department perceives at present no immediate occasion for calling a conference and believes that it would not be opportune under existing circumstances to propose that step”. The Chinese Minister at Washington (Dr. W. W. Yen) was also orally informed in the same sense on the same day.
The Department is still of that view.
You should not initiate any discussion of that question and if on any occasion you are called on to answer an inquiry thereon, any statement which you may make should conform closely to the phraseology of the above.