793.94/15635
Memorandum of Conversations, by the Adviser on Political Relations (Hornbeck)
The French Ambassador called on me on January 18 and read to me a number of telegrams which he had received from his Foreign [Page 269] Office. The most important of these was a telegram giving an account of the controversy between the Japanese and the French Governments over the question of the Japanese bombing of the Yunnan railway: the French Government was protesting against the bombing, and the Japanese Government was demanding that the railway be closed to the carrying of goods into China.
This morning Mr. Truelle38 called on me. Mr. Truelle said that his Ambassador was in New York and that the Embassy had instructions to inform the State Department of the contents of a telegram of which he would now inform me. He then read in translation the telegram giving an account of the reply which the French Government is making to the Japanese. The French Government discussed argumentation which the Japanese Government had presented in which there appeared reference to the existence of a “state of war” between Japan and China. The French Government said that, in as much as the Japanese Government had deliberately refrained from declaring war or a state of war, the French Government was under no obligation to Japan on the score of a belligerent status and that the French Government’s obligations to China were those of the Covenant of the League39 and none inconsistent therewith. It emphasized the importance of the railway as a channel of international trade with China. The communication was throughout strong in tone, typically French in logical exposition, and unyielding in substance.
Mr. Truelle asked how I “liked” it. I replied that it sounded to me very interesting and that I was glad to know that the French Government took the position indicated. I asked whether the communication had been made to the Japanese Foreign Office in Tokyo or to the Japanese Ambassador in Paris and whether it had been made in writing or made orally. Mr. Truelle said that the telegram was a record of what had been spoken orally to the Japanese both in Tokyo and in Paris. He volunteered to send me a summary. I thanked him and said that we would be very glad to have a summary.
There followed a brief conversation regarding the situation in the Far East, in the course of which I made the observation that, as Mr. Welles had indicated to the French Ambassador some time ago,40 we do not share the alarm which has been felt in some quarters over the possibility or the potentialities of a conceivable Japanese-Russian rapprochement nor do we regard as at all likely in the near future a conceivable operation by Japan against the Dutch East Indies.
- French Counselor of Embassy in the United States.↩
- For text, see Foreign Relations, The Paris Peace Conference, 1919, vol. xiii, pp. 57, 69.↩
- See memorandum of December 21, 1939, Foreign Relations, 1939, vol. iii, p. 99.↩