793.94/13506: Telegram
The First Secretary of Embassy in China (Salisbury) to the Secretary of State
Peiping, July 19, 1938—2
p.m.
[Received July 20—8 a.m.]
[Received July 20—8 a.m.]
451. This office’s 436, July 12, 1 p.m., and Ambassador’s 355, July 16, 10 a.m., from Hankow.10
- 1.
- Rumored impending Japanese military changes in North China (particularly the possible assignment here of Doihara11 to be in charge of all special military affairs organs in China) have caused some apparently well founded speculation in regard to possible result of the changes in the Peiping and Nanking regimes. A current report [Page 229] is that Ttagaki favors an immediately amalgamated regime under Chin Yun Peng,12 that Doihara favors amalgamation under Tang Shao Yi, and that hope of Wu Pei Fu’s emergence13 has been practically abandoned.
- 2.
- A well informed official of the National Government who has close connection with Tang Shao Yi’s family has informed an officer of the Embassy that: (1) Tang is distinctly a probability; (2) Tang’s son-in-law, who was a schoolmate of Konoye, visited Japan and North China not long ago in connection with Tang’s emergence; and (3) Tang has gone so far as to make certain stipulations to his assuming office, namely (a) pledging fall of Hankow to the Japanese, (b) establishment of amalgamated new regime at Nanking, and (c) freedom to direct the new regime along the lines in the “Three People’s Principles” as laid down by Sun Yat Sen. The informant stated that stipulation (a) is based on the consideration that the National Government is not defeated so long as it retains Hankow; that meantime to further the purposes of puppet regimes would be traitorous; and that, after the expected fall of Hankow, Tang, as a leader of worth, respectability and prestige, can conscientiously take upon himself the burden of heading the regime which by the nature of things must be set up in the occupied areas. (The above outline has also been given to the Embassy by a retired official closely connected with members of the Peiping staff.)
- 3.
- The informant believes that the expected fall of Hankow will be a political turning point. He thinks that (1) the National Government will thereafter come more and more under the domination of the Communist leaders, and (2) the new regime or regimes cannot, with or without Tang, succeed because of the influence of the Communists with (a) the irregulars who will never be wiped out, and (b) the young generation in China. He adheres to the opinion that Japanese aggression is in effect creating the communism which it ostensibly seeks to destroy. He points out that a kind of communism has already spread through the occupied areas in the form of guerrilla activities and banditry. He states that the young generation has come to look to communism or some offshoot thereof as the only means of saving China from the Japanese, that the coming into influence of the young generation will be coincident with the widespread growth of a communistic or quasi-communistic movement, which will be directed irrevocably to the freeing of China from the Japanese yoke and will ultimately be successful, and that meanwhile China must go through a period of growing chaos whose effect on [Page 230] Chinese and foreigners can be envisaged only in the most tragic outlines.
Repeated to the Embassy, Hankow, Nanking, Consulate General Shanghai, by mail to Tokyo.
Salisbury