The Secretary of State to the Chinese Minister.
Washington , November 14, 1905 .
Dear Mr. Minister: With relation to the subject of the anti-American boycott, which we have discussed on several occasions, I beg to inform you that the American consul-general of Singapore telegraphs that the situation in that city has assumed a very serious aspect; that threatening anonymous letters are in circulation; that the Chinese trade is at a standstill; and that handbills are posted in all Chinese shops.
This report is significant, as showing how the adverse influences, fostered by the comparative immunity of the agitators in China, spread to other neighboring ports and threaten to become uncontrollable. We have long realized the gravity and even the danger of the situation and endeavored to bring your government to a sense of the perils involved in permitting the growth of the antiforeign sentiment, which, ostensibly limited to a single phase of China’s relation to an outside power, is ready to overleap all bounds and to lead at any time to the recurrence of the dreadful atrocities of Lienchow. Surely the interest of China in checking these antiforeign manifestations at the outset can be hardly less vital than that of the United States and of other countries, when the lessons of the recent past and the possibilities of the future for untold evil are considered.
I am, etc.,