Office of the Historian

893.0146/709

Memorandum of Conversation, by the Secretary of State

[Washington,] September 20, 1939.

The French Ambassador called at his own request. He said that he was familiar with the aide-mémoire presented to me on yesterday by the British Ambassador in regard to the question of Japan having invited the British to take their troops out of China. The Ambassador then said he was handing to me an aide-mémoire (translation attached)45 of the same nature and purport as the British aide-mémoire on the same subject. I repeated to the Ambassador the substance of my last conversation with the Japanese Ambassador,46 just as I repeated it to the British Ambassador on yesterday. There was nothing new or different in the two visits. The French Ambassador, in answer to questions, said that his Government had not seriously presented the matter to the Government of Japan but it was going along with the British. I said to him what I said to the British Ambassador apart from the contents of my conversations with the Japanese Ambassador; I need not repeat here these statements, which are contained in the memorandum of my conversation with the British Ambassador on yesterday.

C[ordell] H[ull]
  1. Infra.↩
  2. September 15; see memorandum by the Secretary of State, Foreign Relations, Japan, 1931–1941, vol. ii, p. 15.↩