794.00/315: Telegram
The Counselor of Embassy in China (Lockhart) to the Secretary of State
[Received 12:50 p.m.]
98. 1. The optimism created in North China by press reports of earlier statements of the new Japanese Foreign Minister, which indicated that Japan’s future policy with regard to China might henceforth be more moderate and conciliatory, seems to have diminished. This optimism has decreased in part because subsequent reports of statements of the Foreign Minister indicate that something (presumably the displeasure of the military) has caused him to be less reassuring, implying that the future policy may not be as conciliatory or moderate as seemed at first probable. Lesser causes of the decrease in optimism have been (a) press reports of the failure of the Kodama Economic Mission to accomplish anything concrete and (b) recent conferences of Japanese military officers held at Shanghai and Tientsin, which were perhaps routine in character but which nevertheless created uneasiness among Chinese observers.
[Page 57]2. The Vice Chief of Staff of the Kwantung Army recently said to the Far Eastern correspondent of the Chicago Daily News that the Foreign Minister having amended his original statement on policy, the Kwantung Army was not now in disagreement with his “later statement”.
By mail to Tokyo.