793.94/5533
Memorandum by the Under Secretary of State (Castle) of a Conversation With the Italian Ambassador (De Martino), August 25, 1932
The Ambassador read me a telegram from Rome which said that the Italian Government agreed in principle to the neutralizing of Peiping if it could be done. The telegram pointed out, however, that it would appear to be necessary, from the technical point of view, for all the different nations to have a great many troops in Peiping to maintain neutrality. I pointed out to him that this seemed to me really to be a misunderstanding in that it was obvious that Italy, Great Britain, France and the United States, for example, could not proclaim the neutralizing of Peiping, that it would have to be an agreement between the Chinese and Japanese and certainly, if such an agreement was made between them, the rest of the world would not be expected to enforce it.
The final clause in the telegram interested me. The Italian Government said that the head of the Japanese Legation Guard in Peiping had actually proposed to the various military attaches that, in case of trouble, Peiping should be neutralized. The military attachés, according to the telegram, felt that the proposition was so silly that they did not even transmit it to their Government. It would be interesting to know whether our own military attaché knows anything about this.