793.94/2742: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Chargé in France (Shaw)
569. For Ambassador Dawes: Referring to Embassy’s No. 757, November 17, 8 p.m. The Matsudaira proposition is the most important thing reported by you today. If my understanding of it is correct, I think it would involve surrendering substantially the American position and should be rejected for the reasons below:
- (1)
- Matsudaira desires an agreement for China to negotiate with Japan with regard to the five points, including the much-disputed fifth point on treaty obligations, and to do this without protecting China against the oppressive position in which she is placed now by the Japanese occupation. Plainly put, Matsudaira asks China to agree to negotiate the validity of treaties under dispute without having even the protection of neutral observers. The latter protection was the least which this Government felt China could accept, on the assumption that the Japanese occupation still was in effect.
- (2)
- Matsudaira then desires that an investigation be made of the grievances in both China and Manchuria which Japan claims it has suffered from China, and he is prepared to have this investigation by a neutral body. Thus Matsudaira refuses where Japan is on the defensive [Page 478] to have even neutral observers and proposes where China is on the defensive to have a neutral investigation. This appears to me merely as disingenuous window-dressing and does not at all meet the point this Government has had in mind.
Unless I have misunderstood entirely your report of the Matsudaira proposition, I do not think under these circumstances that it adds anything to the efforts on behalf of a genuine settlement and ought to be rejected.
Coming from Matsudaira, such a proposition is, in fact, one of the most discouraging things I have heard. It is tending to force me toward concluding that a settlement which this Government can accept in the light of the treaties on peace is, after all, getting to be increasingly hopeless and that the only recourse left may be for everyone to close the negotiations, to make public the whole damning case against Japan, and to rest upon the reaction of public opinion which in the United States would be overwhelmingly against Japan. I shall regret greatly reaching this conclusion, but to me the trend of the latest communications appears to be in this direction. I shall hope to have better news tomorrow from you. Since I am not making any communications to the Japanese Government lest I interfere with your negotiations, you had better yourself inform Matsudaira, if you believe Japan should be aware of the way my thoughts are tending.
I agree wholly with your statement about the Nine-Power Treaty’s importance, but a full opportunity has been afforded by the Geneva and Paris Conferences to bring to the attention of Japan its obligations under this treaty, and I can see nothing in Japan’s attitude to indicate that it would be amenable any more to a direct invocation of this treaty than has been the case already in the negotiations under the Covenant of the League of Nations.