893.111/476: Telegram
The Counselor of Embassy in China (Butrick) to the Secretary of State
[Received June 26—10:10 a.m.]
147. Peiping’s 134, June 9, 3 p.m.44 and Tokyo’s 838, [June 18,] Japanese military travel permits. The British Embassy has informed this office that the British Embassy at Tokyo has been instructed to support the representations which have been made by the American Embassy to the Japanese Foreign Office in regard to Japanese military travel permits in North China with a view to obtaining the postponement or abandonment of such travel restrictions.
It has just been learned that the permit system is intended to apply to the United States Marines. Officers will be able to travel on the basis of additional cards which have for some time been issued to them by the Japanese military. These cards include a statement to the effect that they ordinarily eliminate the necessity for showing passport taken up in travelling between Peiping and Chinwangtao. It is practice to require the commanding officer to submit lists of enlisted men for whom permits are desired. One type of permit is valid for 6 months and the other for a specified trip only.
This Embassy believes that the American Government should insist that its marines be allowed to travel in uniform without documents as in the past between Peiping and the sea in accordance with pertinent provisions of the Boxer Protocol.45 The system of travel permits is scheduled to go into effect on July 1st.
Sent to the Department, repeated to Chungking, Tokyo, Shanghai, Tientsin.
- Not printed.↩
- See art. ix of protocol signed at Peking, September 7, 1901, Foreign Relations, 1901, Appendix (Affairs in China), pp. 312, 316.↩