893.24/873
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Secretary of State
The British Ambassador, the Australian Minister and Sir Andrew Agnew, controller of the British oil industry (who recently talked to Dr. Hornbeck), came in at their request.
The Ambassador brought up the question of the reopening of the Burma Road by the British Government by the 15th of October, and raised the question as to the extent that this Government might cooperate in discouraging or deterring Japan from blocking such a step. He made suggestions about how we might protest about closing an international commercial highway, et cetera, et cetera.
He then took up the question of Japanese procurement of oil in the Netherlands East Indies and said that it was giving concern both to the owner and to the Netherlands Government. He stated that the disposition of the Netherlands Government was to be submissive and to refrain from any firmness when approached by Japan, and he expressed his further interest in this Government urging the Netherlands Government to be more firm, et cetera, et cetera. I expressed interest in both lines of comment, and said that we had already spoken to the Netherlands Government58 and that we were making almost a daily record of opposition to Japanese expansion and Japanese aggression, which included all the different conditions to which the Ambassador referred; that this record of ours speaks for itself; that a few weeks in this respect were almost like a generation in normal times; that there was, therefore, no more for me to say at this stage.
Before the general exchange of information and ideas, I said to the Ambassador and to the Minister that there was no occasion at this time for any new subjects or proposals to be taken up and that this conversation should be restricted accordingly, and that we should be able truthfully to say to the public or to the press that our conversation was a sort of general exchange of information such as occurs during the periodic visits here of the British Ambassador, and that there were no requests and no decisions made. To this they unequivocally agreed with the result that the conversation was correspondingly abbreviated and restricted.