741.933/95
Memorandum by the Secretary of State of a Conversation With the British Ambassador (Halifax)
The British Ambassador called at his request and handed me an aide-mémoire (copy attached)13 in regard to extraterritoriality in China.
I remarked that my Government in 193714 and on other occasions had made a statement of policy with respect to the stationing of [Page 276] foreign guards or troops, the maintenance of extraterritorial courts, et cetera, and that this Government pledged itself to discontinue such policy as quickly as circumstances would at all permit. I then added that our representatives in Chungking might well have impressed this on the advisers of Madame Chiang Kai-shek in connection with her articles, which are virtually state papers, in the American press during recent days, in which extraterritoriality was strongly condemned, but in which no credit was given to this Government for its policy some years ago in favoring its early abolition.
- Infra. ↩
- See statement by the Secretary of State, July 16, 1937, and Department of State press release, August 23, 1937, Foreign Relations, Japan, 1931–1941, vol. i, pp. 325 and 355, respectively.↩