793.94/9220: Telegram
The Ambassador in France (Bullitt) to the Secretary of State
[Received 8:10 p.m.]
1127. H. H. Kung, who reached Paris yesterday, and Wellington Koo lunched with me today. Kung read me a telegram which he asserted he had just received from Chiang Kai-shek. The telegram stated that the Japanese Government desired to send a high ranking official to Nanking to confer with General Chiang about a settlement of the present Sino-Japanese conflict.
I asked Kung what terms he believed the Japanese would propose. He and Koo agreed that the Japanese terms probably would consist of a demand for an independent government in the Tientsin-Peiping area, control of the Tientsin-Peiping-Kalgan Railroad by Japanese troops, establishment of a strategic line approximately 50 miles to the south of this railroad, and a promise that troops of the Nanking Government would not approach this line. (The Department will note that this prediction is on all fours with the prediction of the Japanese Ambassador reported in my 1116–1119, August 5, noon.)57
I asked Kung if he believed that Chiang Kai-shek would accept these terms or would prefer to fight. Kung said that General Chiang personally wished to fight but that there was much opposition to fighting in the most influential circles in Nanking. Kung added “I am afraid he will fight.” I gathered the impression from both Kung and Koo that the Chinese are in a less belligerent mood than they have been in the past week.
Kung asked me to transmit the following five presaging messages from him to the President.
- 1.
- He considered it of the utmost importance that the $50,000,000 loan58 with regard to which he had talked with the President, Jesse Jones59 and Pierson60 should go through. If the Japanese should become convinced that their invasion had succeeded in scaring off all the friends of China, they would be greatly encouraged to make their demands impossible.
- 2.
- He had talked with Maisky, Soviet Ambassador in London, who had assured him that if the United States, England, and France would make a joint protest against Japan’s action and would offer mediation and if Japan should reject the offer, the Soviet Union would go to war on the side of China. (My own opinion is that Maisky may have said this to Kung but that there is no truth in his statement).
- 3.
- Kung said that Eden had assured him that if the United States would act in the Far East, Great Britain would cooperate to the fullest extent.
- 4.
- Kung suggested that it might be possible without arousing any attention to see to it that American banks should call all their short term loans to Japanese companies’ banks, and,
- 5.
- Kung suggested that it might be possible to start a campaign in America against the wearing of silk stockings.
Kung expressed the opinion that the carrying out of the suggestions in paragraphs numbered 4 and 5 would be sufficient to throw Japan into the gravest economic and financial difficulties.
Kung will leave Paris on Sunday and sail for China on a German boat from Italy. He expects to reach China in about a month.