793.94/7565: Telegram
The Consul General at Shanghai (Davis) to the Secretary of State
[Received December 24—6 p.m.]
792. 1. My December 24, 3 p.m. and December 24, 5 p.m. Efforts to disperse students by peaceful means exhausted. Police report that some 2,000 were permitted to board train and to leave Shanghai bound ostensibly for Nanking but more likely for some intermediate point.
2. The Japanese Military Attaché told New York Times correspondent for his information and not for public information that the Army, Navy and Foreign Office have agreed to permit student demonstrations to run their course resorting only to local protests until the first part of next week when they plan to make concerted demands which will precipitate a real crisis. He said that it was useless to deal with the present Government because it will not cooperate with Japan and that the present student uprising may lead to its downfall because the Chinese who disapprove the usual course of force in putting it down on the one hand and the Japanese will not [permit] the movement’s going development [sic] too far on the other. He said the Foreign Office three-point program was in the discard and that word had been sent to the Nanking Government that the development of another anti-Japanese boycott would not be tolerated.
3. The Times correspondent says [Japanese?] are convinced that anti-Chiang Kai-shek elements in the Nationalist Party are at the bottom of these disturbances.
Repeated to Department and Nanking.