793.94/8800: Telegram
The Counselor of Embassy in China (Peck) to the Secretary of State
[Received July 16—1:20 p.m.]
287. 1. I called on Vice Minister Hsu Mo and informed him that the Department deemed it advisable that the Ambassador remain in [Page 183] Peiping for the time being. The Vice Minister informed me in reply to questions that General Chiang is in Ruling, that he is in supreme and also active control of troop movements and that the Minister of War functions under him. No field commander-in-chief for North China has been appointed.
2. In general conversation the Vice Minister asked whether the American Government had made any representations in Tokyo relating to the present crisis with Japan. I replied I had no knowledge of any. He said that the Chinese Government is aware that the American Government favors individual rather than simultaneous or joint representations and remarked that his Government did not know the nature of the views expressed to the Japanese Ambassador by the Secretary on July 12. I replied that they had been similar to those expressed to the Chinese representative.
3. The Vice Minister inquired at what stage the American neutrality law19 would be made applicable to the present crisis. I have replied that the law authorized the President to apply it when hostilities threatened to involve the United States in danger. He commented that as he understood the law it would bear more disadvantageously on China as the weaker contestant since Japan did not need as China did access to financial and material resources. He observed that the Chinese people actually hope for the assistance of the United States in their trouble and if on the contrary a law is applied which in fact helps Japan there cannot but be strong popular reaction caused by disappointment. He hoped there would be no early application of the law.
4. He observed that the policy of isolation from war adopted by the American Government might seem wise but a major conflict in the Far East would certainly entail serious world repercussions involvement in which it would be difficult for the United States to avoid and he wondered whether an effort to obviate such a conflict was not really the wiser course for the United States to pursue rather than to attempt isolation.
5. The Vice Minister knew of no attempts to negotiate fresh settlement terms in the North. He said the Japanese Embassy had not, as reported, denied the right of the National Government to intervene but neither had the Japanese Embassy seriously attempted to reach a settlement with the Foreign Office.
6. Sent to the Department and Peiping.
- Approved August 31, 1935; 49 Stat. 1081. As amended February 29, 1936, 49 Stat 1152, and May 1, 1937, 50 Stat 121.↩