550.S 1 Wash./555: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Minister in China (Johnson)
171. On May 19 the President and T. V. Soong issued a joint statement to the press reading as follows: [Page 337]
“At the conclusion of our conversations,47a we note with profound gratification that we are in agreement in regard to the practical measures which must be taken for a solution of the major problems which today confront the world.
We agree that economic stability cannot be achieved without political tranquillity and that economic disarmament can be attained only in a world in which military disarmament is possible. It is our ardent hope that peace may be assured and that to this end practical measures of disarmament may soon be adopted. In this connection our thoughts naturally have turned to the serious developments in the Far East, which have disturbed the peace of the world during the past 2 years. There the military forces of two great nations have been engaged in destructive hostilities. We trust that these hostilities may soon cease in order that the present effort of all the nations of the world to re-establish political and economic peace may succeed.
We are in entire agreement that present unreasonable obstacles to international trade must be removed and that the present financial and monetary chaos must be replaced by order. In this connection we consider it essential that the price of silver, the great medium of exchange of the East, should be enhanced and stabilized. We are in the closest agreement as to many other measures which must be adopted for the rehabilitation of the economic life of China and of the world, and we are both resolved to approach the problems of the World Economic Conference, as well as the problems of the Disarmament Conference, with the determination necessary to bring their labors to success.”
Please inform Nanking and forward to Tokyo by mail.
- Conversations between American and Chinese representatives were held May 9 and 10; see memoranda of May 10 and 11 by the Chief of the Division of Far Eastern Affairs, printed in vol. i, section on the Monetary and Economic Conference (part ii).↩