793.94/6646: Telegram (part air)
The Consul at Geneva (Gilbert) to the Secretary of State
Geneva, May 3, 1934—9
a.m.
[Received May 5—7:08 a.m.]
[Received May 5—7:08 a.m.]
66. Consulate’s 64, May 1, 2 p.m., paragraph 4.
- 1.
- Yokoyama called on me last evening and said that he would be glad
to tell me of the purport of a conversation which he had had
[Page 155]
the evening before with
Avenol. Yokoyama informed me in substance as follows:
- (a)
- He handed to Avenol the statement cited in my 55, April 24, 2 p.m., and made oral explanations along the general lines described in the final paragraph of that telegram.
- (b)
- He made no specific reference to the consultative committee inasmuch as he understood that the deliberations would be confined to the postal question and were “thus of no political importance”.
- (c)
- Respecting the committee on technical assistance, he informed Avenol that Japan desired that the League take steps to guard against the “misuse in China” of technical assistance for political dissimulation.
- (d)
- In response to Avenol’s inquiry whether the Japanese Government could furnish him with any evidence that political activities had been associated with the technical work or carried on by any technical officials, Yokoyama replied that he would make no reference to the past but that his statement only concerns the future.
- (e)
- Expanding on the foregoing Yokoyama informed me that he had made no allegations against Rajchman and that Japan would take no position respecting allegations or his return to China other than that his and all other League activities in China must be strictly nonpolitical.
- (f)
- Answering my inquiry he said that while he had not employed with Avenol the term “inimical acts” he felt that he had “satisfactorily conveyed the impression”;
- (g)
- As he outlined them to me Avenol’s statements to him appeared to have been of the general tenor with certain obviously necessary omissions of what Avenol said to me as reported in my 61, April 28, 11 a.m., paragraph 1 (a) and (d). Avenol stressed to him the limited character of the program of assistance to China and its complete disassociation from political undertakings and asked him to transmit these assurances to the Japanese Government.
- 2.
- Yokoyama carefully explained to me that neither his written statement nor his explanations were in any respect “representations” but that he had given them to the Secretary General solely for his information. The distinction was, however, very subtle.
- 3.
- Yokoyama’s statements to me and likewise his statements to Avenol as he related them to me denoted a complete avoidance of any commitments or of any assertions of specific intentions on the part of Japan. There was in particular an avoidance of any definition of the term “political activity”. The only definition of Japanese policy in any direction was a general reference to the criterion of Japan’s public statements of policy with the implication that Japan will advance a specific interpretation in any given instance as it might arise.
- 4.
- The Avenol–Yokoyama conversation appears at present to “stabilize” the Japanese relations to the League’s in this matter with the exception of possible developments as discussed in my 64.90
Gilbert