Foreign Relations of the United States Diplomatic Papers, 1938, The Far East, Volume III

740.00/524

The Under Secretary of State (Welles) to President Roosevelt⁵³

Washington, December 5, 1938.

My Dear Mr. President: In one of the last conversations I had with Sir Ronald Lindsay before he left on his vacation, I asked if his Government had any specific information with regard to the agreement recently reported to have been concluded between Germany, Japan, and Italy.

The British Chargé d’Affaires⁵⁴ today called to see me with a personal and confidential message from Sir Alexander Cadogan which he was instructed to decode himself and to burn after he had read it to me.

This message was to the following effect: That in the agreement recently signed between the three powers,⁵⁵ the first article provided for mutual support in the event that any one of the three powers became involved in a diplomatic dispute with any third power or powers. The second and last article provided for mutual economic, diplomatic, and political support if one of the three powers were to be threatened by any third power or powers.

My attention was specifically called to the fact that in the German-Japanese anti-Comintern agreement the U. S. S. R. was specifically mentioned, whereas in the new agreement any third power is included.

I was further informed that a secret supplementary treaty had been drafted by the Japanese Government and had been submitted to the other two powers. This proposed secret agreement specified just how much support was to be rendered in the contingencies envisaged in the two articles of the agreement above mentioned, and just how far such support should be carried. The British Government was advised that the Italian Government has so far insisted that there be a year’s delay before any decision was reached on this Japanese suggestion, and that the German Government has up to the present remained non-committal. I was further informed that the Japanese were very strenuously urging that an agreement be reached on this supplementary treaty without any further delay.

Believe me [etc.]

Sumner Welles

53. Photostatic copy obtained from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N. Y.
54. V. A. L. Mallet.
55. This report was in error. A treaty of alliance between the three powers was under discussion but was not signed. For German documents on these discussions, see Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918–1945, ser. D, vol. iv, chs. 4 and 8, passim.