393.1123 Lincheng/165: Telegram
The Minister in China (Schurman) to the Secretary of State
[Received 7:35 p.m.]
231. My 226, June 15, 6 p.m. Committee today adopted following punishments: General Tien, military governor, Shantung, to be summarily dismissed from office and excluded from office and honors hereafter; General Ho, defense commissioner at Yenchowfu, responsible for southern Shantung, to be dismissed from office and excluded from any military appointment hereafter; General Chang, commander of Tientsin-Pukow Railroad police, to be dismissed from office and excluded from similar service hereafter; and Chao, the officer in immediate command of guard on the wrecked train, to be dismissed from office and never again employed in a police capacity. The first three at the discretion of the diplomatic body to be excluded from the protection of foreign concessions or settlements. Apart from these punishment[s] of all officials, the only other sanction has reference to Shanghai; namely, extension of the settlement, extension and improvement of the harbor and maintenance of the ultimatum [sic] arrangements of 1901,98 191299 and 1916,99 with regard to the Whang-poo and also the reorganization of the Mixed Court.
Although the note had already been practically completed, I submitted to-day for incorporation in it the following which the committee adopted and decided to use as the concluding section of the note:
“Diplomatic body has already notified the Chinese Government that it will not henceforth regard notices which have already been received or which may hereafter be, from that Government to the effect that certain areas are [apparent omission] time and the diplomatic body now further declares to the Chinese Government that it will interpret all such original notices as acknowledgments on the part of the Chinese Government of the extension of banditry into new areas and all renewals of such notices as acknowledgments of the failure of the Chinese authorities to suppress banditry where it had hitherto prevailed.
If banditry is not suppressed or at least controlled, foreigners are in danger of losing a large part of the rights guaranteed them by [Page 663] treaty in China. In demanding that China shall be made safe for foreigners the diplomatic body is in effect only asking that China be made safe for the Chinese people themselves. The grave danger to which both foreigners and Chinese are now exposed and of which the Lincheng outrage is only a single manifestation is not due to any lack of military force, for China has more soldiers under arms than any other country in the world. That danger is due to the fact, first, that the soldiers are generally unpaid as was found to be the case in connection with the Lincheng outrage in Shantung and, secondly, that the Chinese Government authorizes or permits the military commanders to use the best national and provincial troops to fight one another and to carry on continuous internecine warfare in different parts of the country greatly to the injury of foreign interests and with incalculable losses and sufferings to the people of China when these forces should be employed for the maintenance of domestic peaceful protection of the people against the depredations of bandits and the control, gradual suppression, and eventual disbandment of the entire wretched system of banditry itself.
If the Chinese Government does not resolutely grapple with the problem of banditry which now threatens to undermine foreign rights and foreign interests in China, if it continues to permit or to tolerate present abuses, the diplomatic body will be forced to consider what further steps must be taken for the protection of foreign life, property rights and interests in a country which though recognized as a member of the family of nations fails to discharge even the most fundamental of the duties which are [inseparably] connected with the rights and privileges of such membership.[”]
Committee meets 22nd to pass on draft of report in final form. It is however the sense of the committee that we should not present report to the diplomatic body until we have heard from our Governments what measures they will authorize for the enforcement of the terms of settlement proposed by the committee in the event of the Chinese Government proving recalcitrant. The committee is of opinion that it would be not only humiliating but disastrous if the diplomatic body were compelled to back down after having made demands on the Chinese Government.
- Foreign Relations, 1901, Appendix (Affairs in China), p. 333.↩
- Not printed.↩
- Not printed.↩