893.102S/1887: Telegram
The Consul General at Shanghai (Gauss) to the Secretary of State
[Received September 15—2:25 p.m.]
826. Reference paragraph 1 of my No. 808, September 10, 6 p.m., regarding the situation in the western area at Shanghai. Commissioner of the Municipal Council conferred this afternoon with the Mayor of the Japanese sponsored municipal regime who stated that under instructions from his Government at Nanking, he must insist upon the Council relinquishing immediately all police rights in the western area where all such matters as taxation and sanitation can be easily settled. If police rights are not relinquished, he said, and another clash occurs between the municipal police and his Chinese police nothing can be settled. The situation therefore is at a deadlock. Some 400 additional Chinese police have now filtered into the area and, under the supervision of Japanese gendarmes, they are establishing police stations, have erected sandbag defenses at several points, and they are patrolling the roads at the same time the municipal police also patrol the roads.
- 2.
- I have no doubt that the attitude of the Mayor has Japanese support. The pretext, of course, is the incident reported in my No. 751, August 30 [20], 11 a.m.80 I have already reported that both the Mayor and the Japanese authorities rejected the offer of a disinterested inquiry to establish the facts of that incident.
- 3.
- As reported in my No. 810, September 11, 2 p.m., I have made firm representations to the Japanese Consul General in this matter. I recommend that those representations be now supported in Tokyo as under the Department’s instructions.
Repeated to Tokyo, Chungking, Peiping.