852.00/6164: Telegram
The Ambassador in France (Bullitt) to the Secretary of State
[Received 7:25 p.m.]
1118–1119. Continuing my 1117, August 5, 11 a.m. [noon].44 Also he45 repeated once more emphatically that he was as fully prepared as Blum46 to go to war if Germany should attack either Czechoslovakia or Poland. France had learned from her experience in letting Austria-Hungary be crushed at Sadowa that if she should permit Germany to conquer the weaker states of Central and Eastern Europe her turn would come next as it had come in 1870.
With regard to the Far Eastern situation Chautemps repeated to me a conversation that he had had yesterday with the new Japanese Ambassador Sugimura which tallied with the account of the same conversation given me by the Japanese Ambassador yesterday afternoon.
Sugimura said to me as he had said to Chautemps that when the French Prime Minister argued with him on the basis of principle that Japan had no right to be engaged in her present activities in China the argument was unanswerable; but we must remember that as one traveled eastward from Europe principle became less and less important and prestige became more and more important. He could assure me that the Japanese Emperor was intensely opposed to war with China. The Army, however, felt that its prestige was involved and was engaged in reestablishing that prestige. Now that the Army had taken Tientsin and Peiping he believed that the Army would feel that its prestige was once more secure. He believed that the Army would insist on occupying a strategic line which would run east and west approximately 50 miles south of Tientsin and Peiping and would [Page 327] be content to hold that position of Chinese territory if it should be provided that troops of the Central Government were not permitted to come anywhere near that line.
He added, however, that he was not sure that the Army would not insist on occupying the better strategic line of the Yellow River. He felt that it would be most unwise for Japan to engage in a long war to crush Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang Kai-shek was a useful person to keep China from collapsing into communism. Moreover, the complications which might be created by a long war were incalculable. It was the part of prudence to occupy at this time merely Peiping and Tientsin and a satisfactory strategic line to protect them. If Chiang Kai-shek troops should attempt to advance to the Peiping-Tientsin area there would be war.
Chautemps said that in the discussion that he had had with the Soviet Ambassador yesterday Souritz had not made the slightest attempt to ascertain the position of France if the Soviet Union should intervene in the Chinese-Japanese dispute and added that he felt certain that the Soviet Union would remain completely quiescent for the moment. If the Soviet Union had had the slightest intention of intervening the recent attack on the Soviet Consulate in Tientsin would have offered an excellent pretext.
- Telegram in four sections numbered 1116 to 1119. Sections 1116 and 1117 are printed in vol. i, pp. 370 and 115, respectively.↩
- Camille Chautemps, President of the French Council of Ministers (Premier).↩
- Leon Blum, Vice President of the French Council of Ministers.↩