793.94/14232: Telegram
The Chargé in France (Wilson) to the Secretary of State
[Received October 29—noon.]
1841. The Chief of the Far Eastern Division of the Foreign Office expressed the opinion to me yesterday that the fall of Canton and [Page 351] Hankow will fail to have decisive effect upon the outcome of the war. Chiang Kai Shek will carry out the plan which he had evolved at the beginning of hostilities for such a contingency as the present and withdraw into Szechwan. He will of course be greatly handicapped in obtaining supplies and will have to look to the overland route from Russia. He is supposed however to have a considerable stock of munitions in Szechwan.
Hoppenot states that if the Japanese were intelligent enough they might now be able to bring about peace by offering such reasonable terms that the Chinese could accept them without loss of face. However, he believes that the Japanese will not be intelligent enough to do this and that their terms will continue to be so harsh that even if Chiang Kai Shek should remove himself from the picture no Chinese leader could possibly accept them.
Hoppenot was much interested in our note to the Japanese Government of October 6.70 I gave him the full text as received by the Department’s 58371 inasmuch as he had seen excerpts in the press. He said that the French had encountered the same types of discrimination in their trade in North China and that the operation of exchange control in that area made it impossible for the French to carry on business there. He said that while our note was an able document he felt that the objective which we had in mind might be achieved more effectively if we would act in concert with the French and British in the Far East. He said that in his judgment the only way that the Japanese can be brought to behave more reasonably will be for the three great Western Powers to set up something in the nature of a common front, not necessarily by acting jointly but by concerting their action in such fashion as to impress the Japanese with the fact that they are taking a common stand in the protection of their interests.
He said that 2 days ago the Japanese Government through the Foreign Office in Tokyo and the Embassy at Paris had repeated its protest against the alleged continued passage of munitions over the railway in Indo-China. See my 1751, October 13, 7 p.m. He said that the note of the Japanese Embassy had been impertinent to the point of insolence. The French reply must await Bonnet’s return from Marseilles but it will be in strong terms stating that the Japanese charges do not merit consideration in view of the formal French assurances that the railway has been closed to munitions traffic and due to the fact that the Japanese fail to adduce a single concrete case supporting their charges. Hoppenot said that the railway had been completely closed to the passage of munitions for over 2 months and that even material ordered by China before the outbreak of hostilities [Page 352] was not allowed passage. For instance, 10 airplanes ordered in May 1937 had arrived in Indo-China recently; the French authorities had seized the planes and cabled Paris that they were needed for the defense of the Protectorate. Paris had approved. Hoppenot stated that the Japanese through their spies knew very well what the true situation was and he believes that the renewed protests in this particular were made merely to hasten justification for military action which the Japanese will take against either Hainan or the French railway in Yunnan.
I asked if the Russians were increasing arms shipments to China. Hoppenot said that his information was that they were not increasing such shipments. He said that there had been reports from Hankow some days before the capture of the city that the Russian Mission there was not on very cordial terms with the Chinese authorities.
- Foreign Relations, Japan, 1931–1941, vol. i, p. 785.↩
- Not found in Department files.↩