793.94/6305
Memorandum by the Chief of the Division of Far Eastern Affairs (Hornbeck) of a Conversation With the Chinese Minister of Finance (Soong) and the Chinese Minister (Sze)
Mr. Soong and Mr. Sze called by appointment. The ostensible purpose of this call was to discuss questions which Mr. Soong had raised, through Mr. Arthur Young, with regard to payments on the American share of the Boxer Indemnity. The Chinese Minister inquired whether we had any late information from Peiping, and Mr. Hornbeck gave him an account of the most recent information which we had (received this morning). Mr. Hornbeck took advantage of this opportunity to state that we had received also two telegrams relating to business or relations between China and the United States and to give account of the contents of these two telegrams: first, a telegram stating that the papers which the Consulate at Nanking had sent to the Foreign Office in August last for signature by the Minister of Finance in connection with the sale of wheat had apparently been misplaced and were being looked for at Nanking; and, second, we were informed that the Ministry of Industries at Nanking was apparently encouraging the imitation by Chinese of American patents or patented articles.41 Having imparted this information, Mr. Hornbeck suggested that perhaps there were questions which the Minister of Finance would like to bring up before we entered upon a discussion of these or any other questions that were “on the calendar”.
[Page 326]Mr. Soong then said that the matter which was giving him most concern was the immediate situation in North China. He said that the Japanese were rapidly approaching Tientsin; the Chinese had been putting up a good fight; they had had some 30,000 casualties during the past two weeks of which 20,000 were within the past few days; they were about at the end of their resources; and he wondered whether the powers could not do something.
Mr. Hornbeck said that he had noted that the Chinese armies were making a substantial resistance and that the Japanese advance did not seem to be as rapid as the Japanese army had estimated that it would be; he said that he regretted, and all Americans regretted, that these hostilities continued and so much bloodshed is taking place; he wondered whether Mr. Soong had conceived any outline of steps which he envisaged as possible and, if taken by the powers, likely to be ameliorative of the situation under discussion. Mr. Soong had apparently not thought the matter through. He said that he thought that the powers, especially the United States, Great Britain and France and possibly Italy, might take “some stand”. There followed a discussion which finally resulted in the suggestion by Mr. Sze that he felt that the American Government, at the time of issuing a communiqué in relation to the conversations between the representative of China and the President might say something indicative of interest by the present Administration in the political situation in the Far East; if nothing else, he said, the American Government might state that it deprecated the continuation of hostilities and bloodshed there; and he went on to say that the world has had as yet no pronouncement from this Administration in relation to the Sino-Japanese conflict—all that the world has had having been the statement issued by the President-Elect before the inauguration affirming solicitude with regard to the sanctity of treaties.
Mr. Hornbeck said that he would make a memorandum of the conversation and bring these points to the attention of the Secretary of State.
The conversation then turned to certain matters outstanding in relations between China and the United States. (See separate memorandum,42)