793.94/4720
Memorandum by the Secretary of State
During the call of the French Ambassador we discussed the Sino-Japanese situation and the Ambassador said that the policy of my note was evidently being adopted by the Assembly. I took the occasion to point out to him Article II of the Nine-Power Pact, saying that I was not so much of a pioneer as people seemed to think because our policy had been reflected in this Article second, signed in 1922. I pointed out that this would seem to forbid any of the nine powers from recognizing a new government in Manchuria. The Ambassador then passed to the effect of such policy and expressed the view that it might not be effective. He thought that if we went so far as to withdraw our consular service it might be just what Japan wanted. He referred to the general futility of the economic sanctions, saying that Napoleon had tried it against Great Britain and had failed, but he went on to say that he thought Japan would fail in her present effort because she [Page 553] did not have the resources to carry her policy through. I asked the Ambassador if he thought that Japan was trying to establish a protectorate over China. He said, “No, that was too big.” She was trying, he thought, to hold a place of advantage in Shanghai, which had many economic and political advantages. He said that it was not only the Gibraltar, but the London and the Paris of the East, controlling the whole Yangtze Valley and that more than half of the commerce of China passed out through there and that we would find that Japan would try to retain some military force there as a bargaining point with China and the rest of the world. The Ambassador then went on to describe the weakness of Japan which, he thought, would eventually cause her to fail. He said that she was extremely poor and her people were discontented; even the landowners were very poor and therefore oppressed their tenants so the result was that Japanese peasants were living on entirely inadequate farms and food supplies. He therefore expected that this grave discontent might find an outlet in a revolution. The Ambassador referred also to the difference in the leaders of Japan now from what they were in the early part of the century. At that time, there were great men like Ito, Inouye, and others that he mentioned; now they were all mediocre with minds not going beyond that of a military officer. He did not, therefore, look to Japan to succeed.