611.9331/89
Memorandum by the Assistant Secretary of State (Johnson)
Mr. Sawada12 called today and said that in his conversation with the Secretary some time ago he had clearly understood from what the Secretary told him that we intended to commence negotiations with the Chinese in the matter of treaty relations and that he was therefore prepared for the statement which we made in the press on July 24, giving the text of the note addressed to the Nationalist Minister for Foreign Affairs by our Minister at Peking. He said the next day, however, he had seen the text of the treaty which had been signed and he had been a little surprised at this as he had been given to understand that it was actually in negotiation.
I gave Mr. Sawada the mimeographed text of the treaty and explained to him that we had ourselves not expected the matter to proceed quite so quickly but that we had sent instructions to Mr. MacMurray and had given him the necessary authorization and that the opportunity had occurred to complete the negotiations even while the note was in preparation to be sent and that Mr. MacMurray having notified us of this, we had told him to go ahead.
I explained to Mr. Sawada that we felt very definitely here that conditions had proceeded to such a point in China where anything that we could do to give encouragement to those interested in setting up a stable government should be given and he agreed with me.
The Chargé asked me whether we had any late information from China and I told him we had not, except that we had received a telegram through our legation from our consul at Mukden13 indicating that feeling was somewhat tense in Mukden, rumors apparently going about that negotiations between the Manchurian authorities and the Nationalist authorities had broken down.
Conversation ended here.