793.94/2928a: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Japan (Forbes)
245. It is my desire that you call upon the Minister for Foreign Affairs and after reading the following message to him, leave with him a copy of it.72
[Page 51]“I have been much concerned to learn from the President of the Council of the League of Nations that Mr. Yoshizawa called upon him Thursday and left an aide mémoire regarding the very serious situation around Chinchow and the necessity of immediate steps to obviate a collision.
Your Excellency will remember that on November 24th in response to my representations through Ambassador Forbes you assured me, with the concurrence of the Minister of War and the Chief of Staff that there would be no movement of Japanese troops in the direction of Chinchow and informed me that orders to that effect had been given to the Japanese troops.73 In reliance upon this assurance I have urged conciliatory steps upon the Chinese Government and an acceptance of the proposal of the Council of the League of Nations, which proposal was in part based upon a proposition of the Japanese Government. Inasmuch as according to Mr. Yoshizawa’s statement to M. Briand there are only some twenty thousand Chinese troops in the Chinchow district and north of the Great Wall, and inasmuch as Chinchow is substantially 120 miles by rail from the South Manchuria Railway at Mukden, I am quite unable to see how there can be any serious danger to that railway or any serious danger of a clash between Chinese and Japanese troops unless the latter troops should fail to observe the orders which Your Excellency assured me had been given.”
A press report has been brought to me as I dictate this cable that Japanese troops have advanced already as far as Kowpangtze. Will you please tell Shidehara, if this report is confirmed by the information available to you in Tokyo, that this information astonishes me and that I am totally unable to reconcile it with the assurances he gave me on November 24, and that I should like to be informed of the real facts of the situation as promptly as possible.