893.05/356: Telegram

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

30. Your 83, January 24, 4 p.m. The Department authorizes you to join your interested colleagues in making such arrangements as may be deemed appropriate and practicable for an extension of the agreement with regard to the Chinese courts in the International Settlement at Shanghai signed on February 17, 1930. For your consideration, however, the Department submits the following observations:

(a)
As the original agreement was signed jointly, the Department is of the opinion that it would be preferable, although not absolutely essential, that the agreement to extend be signed jointly or that a joint note signed by representatives of all the Powers signatory of the original agreement be sent in reply to the identic notes from the Foreign Office.
(b)
The Department is of the opinion that it would be advisable to renew the unilateral declaration of February 17, 1930, made by representatives of the signatory powers and it assumes, of course, that the proposed agreement will expressly extend, concurrently with the main agreement, the understandings set forth in the notes exchanged when that agreement was signed.

Stimson