894.00/882: Telegram
The Ambassador in France (Bullitt) to the Secretary of State
[Received December 21—6:44 p.m.]
3021. Chauvel showed me today a telegram from the Counselor of Embassy in Shanghai in which the statement was made that the Abe Government of Japan was growing shakier daily; that Wang Ching-wei was making larger and larger demands which the Japanese Government could not accept; that two officers of the Soviet Army had arrived in Nanking to negotiate with the officers of the Japanese Army.
Chauvel said that he was obliged to believe that the position of the Japanese Government had become most precarious. He sympathized personally with the point of view expressed by the Under Secretary in his conversation with the French Ambassador on December 2.17 He would be most obliged if I could obtain for him the point of view of my Government with regard to future developments in case the Abe government should fall. He would be especially obliged if I could obtain for him an interpretation of the action of the Japanese Government in promising to open the Yangtze in the course of approximately 2 months. He showed me a copy of an aide-mémoire which [Page 101] had been handed to the British Embassy in Tokyo on this subject. He asked if this action of the Japanese had been produced by the conversations of Ambassador Grew with Admiral Nomura and if so what further developments were expected.