611.9331/267

Memorandum by the Adviser on Political Relations (Hornbeck)

In the course of the informal conversations to which I was a party during my recent visit to London, officers of the Far Eastern Department of the BFO9 brought up the subject of negotiating (if and when) new commercial treaties with China. [See memoranda of conversations held here during the current year with T. V. Soong and with officers of the British Embassy on the same subject.]10

My British opposites expounded British official thought on the subject in the same terms in which that thought had been communicated to us here during recent months. I responded by explaining our [Page 715] thought as it previously had been explained by us here to officers of the British Embassy. I mentioned our conversations with T. V. Soong. I explained that we have at no time considered it desirable to hold the Chinese at arms length on this subject; that we are prepared to discuss with the Chinese the possibilities and potentialities of a new treaty; that we make a distinction between “conversations” and “negotiations”; that we feel that either or both of these procedures would involve a protracted period of discussion, etc.; and that we see no reason to worry over the question of possible disadvantages which might accrue from dealing with this subject before the war is ended and peace settlements are concluded. I pointed out that there will probably be substantial differences at the outset between what we (and the British) would envisage as the desirable contents of a new commercial treaty and what the Chinese would envisage; that we feel that advantages would probably derive from comparing the differences and trying to bridge the gap while the war effort is still on; and that there need not necessarily be envisaged the final concluding of a treaty before or until shortly before or shortly after the concluding of some at least of the peace arrangements. I said, further, that during recent months the Chinese had made no mention whatever of this subject; that we had reason to believe that T. V. Soong was having the matter studied by their officialdom; and that I would not be surprised if when he returns from China he brings a draft. I said that our technicians are working on a draft and have made considerable progress with it. I added that I should not want to have it happen that the Chinese present us with a draft and we be not prepared at the same time and immediately to present them with a draft indicative of our thought on the subject. I said that I intended when I returned to Washington to ask our people to speed up our work on the draft. And, I gently hinted that it seemed to me that it might be to their advantage were the British to proceed along similar lines.

My British opposites commented that what I had said brought to their minds a number of points which had not theretofore occurred to them and that, generally speaking, it put the matter in a new light. Further, they said, they would carefully reconsider the subject in the light of this exchange of views.

S[tanley] K. H[ornbeck]
  1. British Foreign Office.
  2. Brackets appear in the original.