711.933/72: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Minister in China (MacMurray)
226. (1) I have been led to study with care your important telegram 541, July 5, 7 p.m., owing to the importance of the views and recommendations therein set down, and I find that there remain certain matters about which I would like you to telegraph your views in greater detail. I should like, for instance, to have a somewhat clearer idea as to what evaded obligations you mean, before I discuss with the Chinese Minister the question of the Chinese presuming upon our good will and their evasion of obligations.
[Page 582](2) Your recommendation in paragraph (5) is, as I understand it, that this country take the leadership in organizing what would amount to an anti-China international bloc. Of course, such a step would involve my substituting for the independent policy followed hitherto, a policy of international cooperation. This is of such moment that I would appreciate, before a decision is made in the matter, having your views regarding the very obvious dangers which are involved, such as the certain defection, when its national interests can be better served by some other policy, of any member of the group, in which event the United States would be left isolated; and also the undoubted probability that such a reversal of policy would mean losing the country’s support, which the Coolidge administration had for its independent China policy. I feel that this Government would be justified to take such risks only in facing some supreme emergency. Although I have not failed in noting your belief that, unless there is adopted such a policy of international cooperation led by the United States, “the fact may as well be faced that American and other foreign interests will be subjected in China to such treatment as will tend to drive them out and also to create ever-increasing tension in relations with China,” this is so contrary to the beliefs and the information current here that I am anxious to have your reasons in some detail for holding this view.
(3) The very fact that you condition the success of international joint action upon its being taken soon enough in order to forestall the Chinese in initiating and publishing plans which would commit them so far that their withdrawal without loss of face would be impossible, raises the question as to whether the hour may perhaps have already passed when anything can be accomplished by the powers through such means as suggested by you. As evidence that the Chinese Government would seem to have gone far in making its plans and in announcing them, it may be recalled that the American press some time ago reported a public statement, said to have been made by President Chiang Kai-shek, guaranteeing that the National Government would do away by January 1, 1930, with the extraterritorial privileges of foreign countries. The treaties I cited in my telegram 213, June 25, 2 p.m., clearly seem to be based on some such plan. The statement which Minister of Justice Wang Chung-hui made to you (see your telegram 459, June 10, 5 p.m.),79 and which he publicly repeated the other day to press representatives in New York, would seem to confirm this view, as do also the Chinese demands on the British, as reported in your telegram 510, June 26, noon.80