793.94/7446: Telegram
The Counselor of Embassy in China (Lockhart) to the Secretary of State
182. Embassy’s 179, November 27, 10 a.m. Japanese soldiers have gone to the strategic railway junction at Fengtai. They are said by the local Japanese Military Attaché to number less than one company and to be protecting communications to prevent removal of Peining59 rolling stock by way of the Pinghan Railway. Some Chinese claim that the Chinese railway officials at Fengtai have been driven out. According to reports from Tientsin, some 400 Japanese troops arrived there yesterday and new detachments have arrived at various railway stations between Tientsin and Shanhaikwan. Two hundred Japanese troops arrived at Tientsin at 3 p.m. today and two hundred more are now on their way from Tientsin in the direction of Peiping. These are regarded as part of those troops which left Shanhaikwan this morning. The Japanese military took over yesterday the international race track at Tientsin and are today rapidly making it into an airfield. Reliable information about Japanese troop movements in the vicinity of Kupeikou is unobtainable.
2. Doihara is said to be still negotiating here with the Chahar clique. Sung’s position has been strengthened by the abolition from [effective?] today of the Tientsin-Tangku Peace Preservation headquarters formerly under Shang Chen’s control by the withdrawal of Shang’s troops from Northern to Southern Hopei already begun and by the taking over of the Tientsin and Tangku garrison by Sung’s men. The situation would be difficult to evaluate. This may be another demonstration of Japanese military force to induce the Chinese authorities to come to terms desired by the Japanese. However, the action at Fengtai and the making of an airfield at Tientsin seem to point perhaps to more than this. Another possibility is that stern military on the mainland have broken loose again as a result of exasperation engendered by such factors as (a) their failure to evoke an autonomous state in North China, (b) Nanking’s stiffened attitude as indicated by the new monetary policy and perhaps indicated by Nanking’s decisions reported in Nanking’s 111, November 26, 6 [3] p.m., (c) Nanking’s alleged continued evasiveness, and (d) reports of intended Chinese resistance. Another possibility notwithstanding [Page 451] its seeming improbability is that an understanding has already been reached between the Japanese and the National Government under which the Japanese troop movements would be permissible as means of meeting alleged communist threat from the northwest.
Repeated to Nanking and Tokyo.