793.94/7516: Telegram
The Second Secretary of Embassy in China (Atcheson) to the Secretary of State
138. 1. I am privately informed by a department director of the Foreign Office that he does not consider the new arrangement in the North to be in any sense a diplomatic victory for China, as the Chinese Government wishes to have public understand, but rather “the beginning of the end” and his opinion is that the Chinese should have refused to undertake any move toward a special administration and to wait until the Japanese tried force to attain their desires, which he believes is what must happen in the end.
Repeated to Peiping.
2. He anticipates that, since there is and can be no formal written agreement with the Japanese concerning it, the new Commission will not succeed in functioning successfully either from the Chinese or the Japanese point of view and he does not see how the Commission can settle local questions with the Japanese if the direction of foreign affairs remains in Nanking or how Nanking’s control over North China can be maintained if the Commission functions on its own in such matters. He stated that practically no one here has known the full details of the arrangement because Ho’s reports have been going direct to Chiang without reference to any branch of the Government and he understands that completion of the arrangement has been delayed by an impasse probably in reference to finance. He described the new Commission as being (a) combination of the former Peiping political affairs readjustment and the branch military commissions with extended powers, (b) superimposed upon the provincial governments and certain to cost a large sum to maintain.
3. The resignation of Shang Chen as Chairman [of] Hopei [announced?] but announcement as to his successor has not yet been made.
- Telegram in two sections.↩