793.94/11086: Telegram
The Consul General at Shanghai (Gauss) to the Secretary of State
[Received November 12—3:45 p.m.]
962. Reference Department’s No. 534, November 10, 4 p.m.13
The matter is being arranged locally and there is now no need for representations at Tokyo. The facts are that some weeks ago the British military forces caused a light boom to be put across Soochow Creek to prevent hostilities in that section of the Creek which flows through the International Settlement within B Sector of the foreign defense lines. This action could only be justified on the grounds of military necessity as jurisdiction over the creek admittedly is Chinese and not foreign, but as I understand the Japanese also placed a boom lower down on the creek, they cannot now properly complain of the British action. To have removed the boom a few days ago would have permitted the Japanese to navigate the creek at a time when the Chinese and Japanese were fighting across the creek beyond Jessfield and might have been complained of by the Chinese as unneutral. Now that hostilities have moved into the Hinterland, there is no need for the boom and it is being removed by the police.
- 2.
- The situation has been complicated by the truculent attitude of General Matsui since his arrival near Shanghai on November 10 from his headquarters. The Japanese wish to move provisions up the creek to supply their troops in the Hinterland and there was reason to [Page 678] believe that the Japanese military might force their way through the boom. If they had done so they would not have been resisted but an already tense situation would not have been improved. Relations between the British and Japanese have been strained for some days. I urged my Japanese colleagues this morning to leave the matter of the boom to its natural course which would probably be its removal within a very few days by the authorities concerned for lack of further need for it and then there would be no problem for us to discuss. My British and Italian colleagues and I saw the Japanese Consul General later and the British Consul General made it clear that the boom is being removed in the natural course and not as a result of Japanese military pressure. Meanwhile, the Japanese military were pressing British military headquarters and the removal of the boom was proceeding more rapidly perhaps than was necessary or desirable.
- 3.
- In my conversations with the Japanese Consul General this morning I took the opportunity of the private discussion to urge upon him unofficially that the statements reported to have been made to the press by General Matsui are serving only to make more difficult an already difficult situation as in the instance of this boom on the creek which could probably be removed in the natural course as the need for it has disappeared but which could not be removed in compliance with a Japanese demand or Japanese military pressure.