793.94119/574: Telegram
The Ambassador in France (Bullitt) to the Secretary of State
[Received August 29—9:40 a.m.]
1645. For the President. At the close of the conversation with Bonnet,72 recorded in my number 1644, August 29, 1 p.m.,73 he said that he had a most serious request to make of me.
He had sent the French Ambassador in Washington to speak to the Under Secretary about the possibility of an American action designed to settle the war in China and to draw Japan into the French-British orbit. Saint-Quentin had reported to him that he did not know whether he had made any impression or not.74
He, Bonnet, would like to say to me that he felt it was essential in the general interest for the United States to act immediately in this sense. He had absolute information from Berlin that the Germans were moving heaven and earth to draw Japan into the German-Soviet [Page 59] orbit. He had urged the English to take action immediately in Japan and China; but he feared that the British action would be extremely slow and not sufficiently vigorous. Halifax and every one else in the British Foreign Office was too occupied with the problem of war in Europe to think of the Far East. The same was true at the Quai d’Orsay.
I have a feeling that you have already done something in the direction that Bonnet suggests and I believe that the less said about the matter the better. I shall therefore avoid further discussions of this subject in Paris unless they are forced on me.