793.94/14797a

The Ambassador in China (Johnson), Temporarily in the United States, to President Roosevelt 78

Mr. President: The Chinese people under the leadership of the National Government now temporarily seated at Chungking and under the leadership of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek intend to continue resistance to the Japanese invasion of China. It is my belief that the Chinese will be able to continue this resistance indefinitely. Generalissimo Chiang told me the day before I left Chungking last December, and I know no reason to doubt the statement, that his armies were intact and that they had military supplies sufficient to carry them on for two years at the present rate of guerrilla expenditure. They hope for assistance from the outside world in the economic field. Chinese Government supplies of silver are practically exhausted and they will be put to it to maintain China’s currency in exchange for foreign currency.

Japan lost the war when it failed to obtain a peace dictated on the basis of Japanese terms under the walls of Nanking as the British did in 1842. When the Japanese took Nanking, found the Government gone and the Chinese armies gone they were left with the alternatives of consolidating their positions at Shanghai and in north China and controlling an established Chinese Government in the interior from the coast, or proceed to the conquest of China. It is my conviction that the Japanese Army chose the latter alternative. It has from time to time announced, and continues to announce, that peace is not possible until it has smashed the Chinese National Government and Generalissimo Chiang. This announced policy and the cruelties which have accompanied the Japanese advance into the interior have done more to unite the people of China behind the National Government and Chiang, who symbolizes the Chinese desires for an independent national existence, than anything else and I feel that the Japanese Army has commenced something which it cannot finish. I feel, however, [Page 513] that it is going to take a long time for the military leaders of Japan to discover this, for the Chinese are in no position to administer a decisive defeat to the armies in the field. The struggle must go on as it is now, the Chinese resisting by means of guerrilla tactics which at best can only prolong the conflict to the point where Japan will be exhausted economically, culturally and physically. I sometimes wonder whether the East is not threatened with the kind of collapse of civilization which we have sometimes heard Europe threatened with if another European war should commence. War is on in the East. There is no leader in China who could make peace with the Japanese and carry his people with him and there is no leader in Japan who could make peace with the Chinese on terms less than the Japanese Army desires and carry the Army with him. The only hope that the Japanese have at the present time is to make peace with a Japanese-fostered régime or régimes in China but such a peace will of necessity involve the Japanese in the responsibility of disarming the people of China in order to make it possible for the writ of such a Japanese regime to run beyond the walls of the towns in which the regimes have their homes.

History will record that the outstanding event of this decade was the end of the British Empire as a unit. The Statute of Westminster marked that end. London is paralyzed now in any decision that it may have to make for it cannot make such a decision on the assumption that Canada and Australia and South Africa will support its decision without question. The frontiers of the United States are the world. As the eldest son of the old British Empire (a son, it is true, who ran away from home and set himself up independently in business at the time when the Empire was in the making) we must from now on share with Canada, Australia and South Africa and England the responsibility of maintaining the ideals which characterized international intercourse during the years that the British Empire was dominant in world affairs or see those ideals lost. We are strong and capable and whether we like it or not our decisions are looked for and listened to with a great deal of respect. We must lead the world out of the chaos in which it is now struggling. I feel that the day of colonial empires is past. Japan must slowly come to that realization. Japan has already expended a greater sum upon its attempt to start an empire in Asia than England spent as the initial cost of the establishment of the British Empire. If civilization is not to be lost, the United States must and will play a greater part in its preservation than we now seem conscious of the necessity for. Dictatorships such as that now controlling Japan understand force and will yield only to superior power. It is not a question whether we are going to war or not. The question is whether we are ready to fight for the ideals [Page 514] which we have hitherto held as necessary to a peaceful existence. If the world and particularly the dictatorships understand that we are prepared to fight, they will exercise more care in their relations with us and the rest of the world. You cannot send a policeman armed with a truncheon to deal with a gangster who is armed with a machine gun.

The situation demands that we, as the most powerful unit in a world of nations, must begin now to consider the part that we are to play. Unless we begin to show our teeth now and indicate to the world and specifically to Japan that we mean business we may forever find ourselves estopped from taking action. We may perhaps find ourselves with a Japan taking everything west of the 180th meridian as the Japanese sphere of influence and interest within which we may neither improve or fortify our own interests nor enter without Japanese permission. Time is with China in its conflict with Japan but time is with the totalitarian states in their relations with the democracies. We should do what we can to assist and encourage the Chinese in their fight for an independent national existence. The Pacific area will be safer for us and for the world if there are three nations involved, namely, China, Japan and the United States, than if there are but two, japan and the United States. Japan cannot complete its adventure in China without the financial assistance of the United States and we as a government should take such steps as may be necessary to discourage financial assistance to Japan or to those regimes which Japan may attempt to set up in China. We cannot afford to wait upon other nations in regard to this matter. It is not a question of saving British chestnuts, our own chestnuts are involved.

Respectfully,

Nelson Trusler Johnson
  1. Transmitted to President Roosevelt by the Secretary of State in his covering letter of March 3.