Mr. Olney to Mr. Denby.
Washington, September 19, 1895.
Sir: The necessity of conducting recent correspondence with you by telegraph, in view of the importance and urgency of the questions now arising in connection with the effective protection of our American citizens residing in the interior of China, has naturally interfered with extended consideration of your several dispatches on the same subject which have reached the Department a month or six weeks after their date.
The consideration now being given to the question of organizing an independent commission for the investigation of the riots at Szechuan in June last lends, however, a special interest to your dispatch No. 2293, of July 26 last, in which you report the steps taken by you to join an American missionary to the commission proposed to be headed by the British consul at Chungking, and the proceedings of a meeting at Shanghai in favor of a separate American commission, as well as your conclusion that the proposed participation in the British commission would not be sufficiently impressive, In view of which you notified the British minister that the steps taken by you to have an American representative upon that commission were countermanded until you should receive the instructions of the Department.
These you have already received by cable. The Department’s first desire was to continue the Szechuan investigation under the terms of participation originally contemplated by you; but the delay in setting the British inquiry on foot and the subsequent alarming occurrences of Kutien, led it to an independent conclusion in the same line as yours, namely, that in view of the large number of American missionary stations throughout Szechuan and the neighboring provinces and the apparent danger to life and property there, a more impressive demonstration than had been at first arranged had become expedient.
In your same dispatch, No. 2293, you discuss the advisability of an international commission representing all the western powers in order to accomplish the end proposed by the present expedient of separate investigation; and you suggest that the United States might properly take the initiative in such a movement. This scheme, which appears to have originated at a meeting of foreigners held at Hankow and to have been embodied in certain resolutions passed thereat, does not strike the Department as practicable with regard to the particular investigation of the Chengtu outrage, or as feasible if the purpose be to organize a permanent international tribunal. It is to be remembered that the French commission has already investigated the Chengtu matters and concluded its labors, so that a reinvestigation by France, [Page 139] as a member of the proposed international commission, would seem superfluous if not embarrassing. Again, a commission as complex as that suggested would be found difficult of organization and perhaps inert in its operations.
It is the Department’s conviction that the apparent policy of the Chinese Government, to separate the United States from the questions raised by the occurrences in Szechuan and Fuhkien, and the interest of this Government in adequately protecting the large American interests in those provinces, not only as respects past outrages but future security, involve an impressive demonstration which can leave no doubt in the mind of the Chinese Government or of the people of the interior that the United States Government is an effective factor in securing due rights for Americans resident in China. In the course of recent interviews with the Chinese minister here it has clearly appeared that the object of his Government was primarily to insure the withdrawal of the United States from participation in the investigations set on foot by Great Britain, or any other foreign power; and in the second place, when the disposition of this Government to take the matter up for itself without cooperation with any other power was discerned, the proposition was made that the United States should abstain altogether from any investigation and await the result of the Chinese inquiries.
Regarding our proposition for an independent examination of the Chengtu business as a crucial test, it has been determined to push it to a successful conclusion on the assumption that if this be done, and the attitude of the United States for the protection of the lives and property of its citizens in China be conspicuously manifested, the necessity for such procedure on our part will, in all probability, not recur.
Another consideration may be noted, which is that as an efficient demand on the part of this Government may, and in all probability will, include the punishment of delinquent officials in high places, it seems desirable that such demands should rest upon the facts as ascertained by us through separate investigations, and that we should not be dependent upon the reports of any foreign investigation to which we may not be a party—such as that undertaken by the French—or in which our participation may have been only accessory, as in the original proposal to delegate the representation of the United States to the British consul at Chungking.
Your dispatches have strongly intimated the culpability of the ex-viceroy of the Szechuan, and your demand for his degradation and punishment may be supposed to rest upon the facts elicited in the French investigation. That demand having been made by you and not heeded is to be further supported, if at all, by facts elicited by this Government for which it may responsibly vouch.
I am, etc.,