793.94/7861: Telegram
The Consul General at Canton (Spiker) to the Secretary of State
[Received 4:05 p.m.]
Referring to previous correspondence concerning possible cooperation between Japanese and Kwangsi provincial leaders. In a lengthy newspaper statement published in local and Hong Kong press on April 18, Marshal Li Tsung Jen, military spokesman for Kwangsi, urges war resistance against Japan as sole means of salvation of China at this juncture. Li holds there is no likelihood of the United States, Great Britain, or Russia going to war with Japan and that those who urge delay in belief that such war will solve China’s problems play directly into Japan’s hands. He admits that in Sino-Japanese conflict, Japan will promptly seize China’s ports and will blockade her coast but that ensuing extended guerrilla warfare in interior China will require such an expenditure of men and treasure by Japan that under pressure from within and without there will be precipitated economic and political crisis which will make prosecution of foreign war impossible. On the other hand, Li presages that “the impact of foreign aggression and raising of standard of war for national emancipation the Chinese will become more united”; that Japan will suffer “such diplomatic isolation that it would be easy for the powers to help China either morally or materially and to capitalize Japan’s war-given exhaustion”. Despatch follows.53 Sent to Department and to Peiping and Nanking.
- Not found in Department files.↩