711.0012 Anti-War/868: Telegram

The Minister in China (MacMurray) to the Secretary of State

651. Department’s circulars July 25 [24] 5 p.m., and July 25, 7 p.m.33 The following reply has been received by telephone from the Minister for Foreign Affairs:34 [Page 259]

“Excellency: Please accept my sincerest thanks for your telegram of July 27th informing the National Government that the treaty for the renunciation of war, signed at Paris on August 27, 1928, became effective on July 24, 1929.

The people and Government of China have always stood for peace and the outlawry of war and they unite with me in voicing their confident hope that through the coming into effect of the aforesaid treaty the peace of the world will be preserved and safeguarded.

The good tidings contained in Your Excellency’s telegram under reply is all the more welcome to the people and Government of China and is a happy vindication of their stand in the present temporary deadlock between the Republic of China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic[s]. In pursuance of their traditional love of peace and their belief in the efficiency [efficacy?] of reason as against the delusive persuasions of war, the people and Government of China have continued to maintain an unswerving attitude of peace in the spirit of the aforesaid treaty and declared their willingness to arrive at a settlement with the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics by pacific means.

The coming into force of the aforesaid treaty therefore strikes a very sympathetic chord in the heart of the people of China, and in the name of the National Government I have very lively pleasure in extending our heartiest congratulations upon the consummation of an epoch-making treaty that was so auspiciously sponsored by Your Excellency’s Government.

I shall be grateful if you will be good enough to transmit the above to Your Excellency’s Government, and I am happy to renew to Your Excellency the assurance of my highest consideration. (Signed) Chengting T. Wang, Minister for Foreign Affairs.”

MacMurray
  1. Telegram in four sections.
  2. Neither printed.
  3. Dated July 29, 1929.