793.94/8897a: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Counselor of Embassy in China (Peck) at Nanking
112. 1. The Chinese Ambassador called this morning at my request. I inquired with regard to the Ambassador’s latest news and the [Page 239] Ambassador replied that he had nothing recent of importance except the text of the statement which Chiang Kai-shek had made.63 He said that he knew nothing about the clash reported yesterday at Wanpinghsien except what he had seen in the newspapers. I then referred to our great solicitude for peace. I spoke of the policy which we have followed and of the importance of stabilizing various situations and exercising restraint and doing constructive things. I said that hostilities anywhere would jeopardize hopes of improving world relationships. I said that I had been seeking to emphasize to all governments and all nations alike the basic points of the broad Buenos Aires program and that to that end I gave out a statement on last Friday based on the eight-point pillars of peace address which I had made at Buenos Aires; that I was bringing this statement to the attention of foreign governments, a few each day, and hoping for favorable expressions of their views in accordance with and in support of the principles stated therein. I handed the Ambassador a copy of the statement of last Friday and I asked that it be brought to the attention of the Ambassador’s Government.
I then said that we wanted to do anything that we appropriately could that might be helpful; that I had been undertaking to confer from time to time with the Ambassadors from both China and Japan with regard to developments, present and prospective; and that I have approached each government, in a spirit of genuine friendliness and impartiality, in an earnest effort to contribute something to the cause of peace and to the avoidance of hostilities in the Far East.
2. The Japanese Ambassador also called this morning at my request and I made to him statements along substantially the same line as the statements made to the Chinese Ambassador, indicating our great solicitude for peace.
3. Please arrange to call at an early moment upon the Minister for Foreign Affairs and inform him that I wished him to have through our diplomatic representative there information in regard to what I had said to his country’s Ambassador here. Please then read to the Foreign Minister the statements contained in numbered part 1 of this telegram. You may add that I had a conversation along the same general lines with the Japanese Ambassador here.
4. Repeat to Peiping.