793.94/7549
Memorandum by the Ambassador in China (Johnson) of a Conversation With the British Ambassador in China (Cadogan)17
In a conversation which I had today with Sir Alexander Cadogan, the subject of the warning which, according to the press, was delivered to the local Chinese authorities at Tientsin and Peiping yesterday, by General Tada and the Japanese Consul General, Kawagoe, came up, and Sir Alexander expressed his inability to fathom the Japanese intentions and plans in regard to China. He remarked that our Japanese colleague seemed to be completely out of the picture, and that Japan apparently continued to make its wishes known to the Chinese through agents who were constantly calling upon Chinese officials and making statements. He thought probably that, at the basis of it all, was the statement issued by Amau on April 17th of last year.18 I stated that I was equally at a loss and that it seemed to me the Japanese policy, as frequently enunciated by the military, is hardly likely to be economically profitable in the long run, although I foresaw eventually that Western merchants would find themselves blanketed by the crowd of Japanese merchants able to out- and under-sell them. Sir Alexander agreed, and stated that he had well-authenticated information to the effect that the Customs barrier at Shanhaikwan had practically been done away with; that smuggling was going on there on a very large scale; that anyone traveling through Chinwangtao and Shanhaikwan could see a stream of coolies carrying large bundles of silk and other wares, guarded by Koreans armed with staves and other weapons. He said that Sir Frederick Maze19 had confirmed this [Page 377] and had stated the Chinese Customs were completely unable to cope with it; that, even farther down the railway at Tientsin, they were unable to examine these goods. I told Sir Alexander that in a conversation I had had with an American merchant yesterday, who had just returned from a vacation in Dairen, the latter had informed me that Dairen was full of Japanese merchants waiting for the signal to move into China and establish business, using the free port of Dairen as a base for supplies, and that I felt quite certain that if and when the Japanese military moved into north China, we would find that, insofar as Japanese merchants were concerned, the port of Tientsin would be just as open as was now the case at Shanhaikwan, and, of course, this meant that the whole of China was open, for I thought it would be utterly impossible for the Chinese to establish Customs barriers along any interior line south of Tientsin where it could be effective.
I asked Sir Alexander whether the Japanese government had ever taken the British government into its confidence in regard to its plans in China. I said that I had in mind the Four-Power understanding made at the time of the Nine-Power Treaty, whereby the four principal powers agreed to keep one another informed of measures considered by them necessary to protect their interests in China.20 Sir Alexander stated quite categorically (and repeated the statement) that insofar as he was informed—and he thought that surely he would have been informed—the Japanese government had never taken the British government into its confidence. He expressed the conviction that insofar as the Nine-Power Treaty was concerned, it was a dead letter; an agreement which the Japanese did not intend to take seriously in regard to any plans which they might have regarding China. He agreed with me that there were probably two explanation[s] for the policy which the Japanese military were now pursuing: (a) that they had put their national pride up to the point where they could not tolerate the idea of Western interests in an area which they looked upon as the particular field for realizing Japan’s civilizing ambitions as a nation, and (b) a fear of Soviet Russia. With regard to “(a)”, we agreed that while Western interests were bound to suffer, such interests were so large that it would take a long time to liquidate them, a process which could only be harmful to the Japanese; and with regard [Page 378] to “(b)”, that the occupation of extended areas in China with a possible eye to the value of China as a source of raw materials to be used by their people, would, in case of a war, demobilize a very considerable amount of the Japanese striking power, because of the necessity of a large garrison to hold the people down.
- Copy transmitted to the Department by the Ambassador in China, in his despatch No. 90, November 16; received December 19.↩
- Foreign Relations, Japan, 1931–1941, vol. i, p. 224.↩
- British Inspector General of the Chinese Maritime Customs Administration.↩
- Marginal notation by the Assistant Chief of the Division of Far Eastern Affairs: “??? Applies only to Pacific islands and dominions. M[axwell] M. H[amilton].” See art. I of treaty signed at Washington, December 13, 1921: Foreign Relations, 1922, vol. i, p. 33. In a reply to Mr. Hamilton, the Ambassador in China on February 26, 1936, stated: “I suppose that what was in my mind was really a composite of the obligations entered into by the four Powers regarding their interests in their insular possessions and insular dominions in the region of the Pacific Ocean and the obligation implied in Article VII of the Nine-Power Treaty regarding China”. (793.94/7822). For text of Nine-Power Treaty, see Foreign Relations, 1922, vol. i, p. 276.↩