Office of the Historian

793.94/5471: Telegram

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

Peiping, August 6, 1932—11 a.m.
[Received August 6—5:45 a.m.]

905. My 894, August 3, 8 p.m.

(a)
It would seem to me that we could legitimately make use of a recent incident when local press commented on Japanese guard making sham attack upon Legation quarter wall from point under Chinese jurisdiction beyond the street near Peking Hotel to remind [Page 563] Tokyo that Legation quarter was established under article 7 of the Boxer protocol99 as a quarter to be occupied by the Legations.
(b)
That by the same article each of the powers obtained in China recognition of its right to maintain a permanent guard “in the said quarter for the defense of its Legation”.
(c)
That by reason of the above all of the Legations maintaining permanent guard in the quarter become jointly interested in and responsible for the maintenance of the diplomatic immunity of the quarter.
(d)
That each power maintaining a guard here becomes therefore ultimately and properly concerned with the activities of any of the other guards that may be the means of inciting attack by the Chinese upon the quarter.
(e)
That we therefore feel that we are entirely within our rights when we request that the Japanese Government instruct its commandant of guard at Peiping in such manner as to make it possible for him to keep his guard within the walls of the Legation quarter except when in the opinion of the senior of all the guards (at the present the American) activities outside the quarter are proper.
(f)
And that the best thing for the Japanese to do at this time would be for them to take their guard away from Peiping leaving the protection of their Legation to the rest of us.

Code text to Tokyo by mail.

Johnson
  1. Signed at Peking, September 7, 1901, Foreign Relations, 1901, Appendix (Affairs in China), p. 312.↩