793.94/5732: Telegram

The Consul General at Nanking (Peck) to the Secretary of State

5. The political Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs has just handed me a memorandum which, I think, is being addressed to all the remaining signatory powers to the protocol of 1901. The translation supplied with the Chinese text reads as follows:

“January 10. The Chinese Government desires to call the attention of the American Government to the fact that, taking unlawful advantage of the special privileges under the protocol of 1901, to which the United States is a signatory party, Japanese troops have attacked and occupied the city of Shanhaikwan, slaughtered thousands of peaceful Chinese citizens and inflicted considerable damage to property in and around that place, and are further concentrating in large numbers near Shanhaikwan and along the Peiping-Liaoning Railway. Under these circumstances, the Chinese Government is constrained to declare that it cannot assume responsibility for any situation, in law or in fact, which may result from the exercise, by the Chinese defensive forces of the legitimate right of resisting the aggressive actions of the Japanese troops.[”]

The Vice Minister said that the Chinese Government wished to make informally to the powers signatory to the 1901 protocol the suggestion that they make some sort of representation to the Japanese Government to dissuade it from abusing privileges it might seek to claim under the provisions of the protocol. He stated incidentally that Chinese troops had been massed along the railway to oppose any further advance of the Japanese forces.

Repeated to the Department.

Peck