893.811/1013: Telegram
The Consul General at Shanghai (Lockhart) to the Secretary of State
[Received September 16—7:40 a.m.]
1225. My 900, June 25, 10 a.m., Department’s 407, July [June] 29, 3 p.m., my 1152, August 22, 7 p.m. and Department’s August 24, 4 p.m. Morishima, Counselor of the Japanese Embassy, has orally informed me that the Japanese Government is anxious to settle the Whangpoo Conservancy matter and believes that it can be settled on the basis of a Japanese co-engineer-in-chief with the appointment of four or five other minor officials or employees, together with a Japanese liaison officer between the Japanese authorities and the Conservancy Board. Morishima states that the proposal does not contemplate the removal of the present Chinese engineer-in-chief who, Morishima believes, will be willing to continue in his present position as a co-engineer-in-chief.
This tentative problem [proposal] [is] largely due [to] recession from the original stand taken by the Japanese but a conversation which I had with the British Chargé d’Affaires and with the British Consulate today leads me to believe that the fresh proposal might not be acceptable to them. The American Minister [Ambassador] expressed the view that the interested powers should press for the return of all Conservancy equipment and property to its pre-hostilities status and that the fresh proposals now made by Morishima should be accepted only as a last resort. I have not committed the Consulate General to the acceptance of a Japanese co-engineer-in-chief but I believe that if the Whangpoo Conservancy right of way operations are to be resumed in the reasonably near future it may be found necessary to make some concession on the basis of expediency and preservation of an indispensable waterway. I believe, however, that before this is done the concerned Ambassadors at Tokyo should make further representations to the Foreign Office but their [representations?] should be somewhat more emphatic than those suggested in my 1152, [Page 184] August 22, 7 p.m., and approved by the Department’s 296, August 24, 4 p.m.
To Tokyo, repeated to Chungking and Peiping.