893.51/3788
The Secretary of State to Mr. Thomas W. Lamont
My Dear Mr. Lamont: Let me acknowledge and thank you for the letter of the 7th instant in which you assure me of the continued desire of the American Group of the Chinese Consortium to cooperate with the Department, and very courteously communicate to me the draft of a letter which you propose to transmit privately to the members of the American Group.
To answer first your implied request for my sanction of your reference to the remarks I made to you in our conversation of last Wednesday, I wish to assure you that I quite approve of your quotation of my comments, as embodied in the second paragraph of the draft letter.
I am in cordial agreement with the attitude formulated in your draft letter; and for that reason, since you have been good enough to communicate it to me in advance, I venture to suggest that it might be well to emphasize a viewpoint which is implicit in your statement but which should perhaps be stressed in view of its fundamental character. You are quite warranted in recalling that the [Page 765] American Group was originally formed at the instance of the Department of State and along lines indicated by it, and that the organization of the new Consortium has been of peculiarly American conception; and in indicating that the organization was largely in the nature of a public service, designed to substitute the principle of international cooperation instead of competition in China, and that a breaking up of the Consortium would tend to re-establish conditions which it has been the object of this Government’s traditional policies in the Far East to remove. It occurs to me however to suggest that it might be fitting and opportune for you to point out in this connection that the reason for these policies is to be found in the conviction that, in the interests of the future economic development of our own country, it is essential that our interests should preserve the opportunity for practical participation in the financial and industrial development of China; and that in this view of the matter the activity of our bankers in this field is not a matter of mere academic concern but a provision for a future stage in which they, jointly with our manufacturers and merchants, will feel a need for expansion into the potentially rich markets of China. It is not, therefore, in pursuance of some abstract or recondite governmental purpose that the former Administration enlisted the cooperation of the American Group, and that I have indicated to you my hope that that cooperation would be continued; but it is rather in the confidence that even a protracted unremunerative period of delay, before the Consortium can begin active functions, would in the long run prove amply justified by the ultimate benefits to the commercial and financial conditions of our own country.
If, as I believe is the case, you share this feeling that the continued concern of the American Group in Chinese affairs is a matter of wise prevision in their own interests, it might be well if your letter to the members of the Group were more explicitly to embody this viewpoint, which there is perhaps a tendency to overlook in these days of retrenchment.
Yours sincerely,