893.248/206
Memorandum of Conversations, by the Chief of the Division of Controls (Green)99
At Mr. Hornbeck’s suggestion the Chinese Ambassador called at my office this afternoon to receive any suggestions I might be able [Page 683] to make concerning the procedure which the Chinese Government should follow in order to obtain military planes in this country.
I reviewed some of the recent efforts of representatives of the Chinese Government to obtain planes in the United States and said that it was my impression that they had followed a mistaken policy in making reiterated endeavors to obtain small numbers of planes for immediate delivery.
The Ambassador agreed that this had been a mistaken policy and that in any case it had produced no tangible results. He added that he had, on occasions, endeavored to persuade representatives of his Government engaged in negotiations for the purchase of planes to abandon it, but that they had persisted and he had let the matter drop as he had presumed that they knew more about the business of purchasing planes than he did.
I suggested to the Ambassador that the most satisfactory procedure to follow and the only procedure in my opinion which would be certain to lead to the results which his Government desired would be for representatives of his Government to consult, as soon as possible, with Mr. Philip Young, chairman of the President’s Liaison Committee, with a view to placing of orders immediately for as many military planes of the types best adapted to the needs of the Chinese Air Force as the Chinese Government felt that it needed and could afford to buy. I said that Mr. Young and his committee would be glad to advise the Chinese representatives as to the types of planes which might be most useful and most readily obtainable and that small orders of twenty-five or fifty of each of these types could be added to the large orders of planes of similar types already placed by the British, Canadian, and American Governments. I added that if the Chinese Government placed these orders not on the basis of delivery at some fixed date but merely for delivery as soon as possible, Mr. Young and his committee could probably arrange that the Chinese would be given the advantage of deliveries which could be effected as the result of any possible speeding up in construction of planes on order for the other Governments mentioned above. I assured the Ambassador that Mr. Young and his committee were fully informed as to the desire of this Department that the Chinese Government be enabled to obtain as many planes as possible, as soon as possible, and that his Government could rely upon receiving useful advice and assistance from the committee. The Ambassador thanked me for the suggestion and said that he would telegraph his Government immediately asking that appropriate instructions be sent without delay to the Chinese agencies in this country.
In the interval between the Ambassador’s telephone call to make his appointment and his arrival at my office, I called Mr. Philip Young [Page 684] by telephone, told him what I proposed to say to the Ambassador and asked him his opinion of that suggestion.
Mr. Young said that in his opinion that was the only intelligent way to deal with the matter and that undoubtedly his committee could, if the Chinese Government were to place orders without delay, see to it that the deliveries were begun within a reasonable length of time.
- Noted by the Secretary of State.↩