761.94/1184
Memorandum by the Under Secretary of State (Welles) of a Conversation With the British Ambassador (Lothian)
The British Ambassador called at my request this afternoon. I said to the Ambassador that I wished to have a conversation with him with regard to the questions which he had raised in an earlier conversation concerning fundamental problems of Far Eastern policy and that, in order to simplify matters for both of us, I would give him in writing the views which this Government held in the matter with the request that he consider the document given him not as a memorandum but merely the substance of a conversation. The pages given him were [Page 97] identical with those which I had given to the French Ambassador on December 2.12
The Ambassador read the summary very attentively and then stated that his Government was very fearful that in the event that Japan believed that no adjustment could be had with the United States, Great Britain, and France concerning Japanese policy in China, Japan would be driven into the arms of the Soviet Union. In that event, the Ambassador said, it would not be the United States who would suffer, at least not at first, but rather Great Britain and France, who would be the object of retaliation of the most vigorous character on the part of Japan.
I said to the Ambassador that it would seem to me that there were many indications that Japan would make every reasonable effort to find a basis for adjustment with the United States as well as with the other western powers. I stated that information which this Government had from its Embassy in Tokyo made me believe that the Japanese Government was not undertaking any negotiations of a political character with the Soviet, although it might be possible that members of the Japanese Army were discussing questions of a political character with Soviet officers. The Ambassador immediately stated that he had just had a telegram from Sir Robert Craigie informing him that very highly placed and important Japanese officers were in fact engaged in such negotiations and that Sir Robert Craigie believed that the impression was rapidly increasing in Japan that no agreement of a character which Japan would possibly consider could be arrived at with the United States. To this I merely replied that the information which I possessed did not coincide with the information sent by Sir Robert Craigie and that, on the contrary, I believed that the conversations between the Japanese Foreign Minister and Mr. Grew13 had been friendly and encouraging in character insofar as the discussion of the rights of the United States and its nationals in China were concerned.
- See footnote 7, p. 92.↩
- See telegram No. 656, December 4, 10 p.m., from the Ambassador in Japan, Foreign Relations, Japan, 1931–1941, vol. ii, p. 40.↩