893.51/2268: Telegram
The Ambassador in Great Britain (Davis) to the Acting Secretary of State
[Received June 19, 12.57 a.m.]
2324. For Breckinridge Long:
Following message from T. W. Lamont for J. P. Morgan of American group:
“Further China conference, today. Present Addis, Odagiri and Tatsumi of Japan, Whigham17 and me. Odagiri presented to me, [Page 452] in accordance with request that I made to him when leaving Paris, the confirmation of newly adopted Japanese position in following letter:
‘With reference to our interview in Paris and Mr. Tatsumi’s conversation with you (Lamont) on the 16th instant in connection with the proposed new consortium for Chinese business, for your information I would wish to communicate to you that we have been [instructed] by our principals in Japan that all the rights and options held by Japan in the regions of Manchuria and Mongolia where Japan has special interests should be excluded from the arrangements for pooling provided for in the proposed agreement. This is based on the very special relations which Japan enjoys geographically and historically with the regions referred to and which have been recognized by Great Britain, the United States, France, and Russia on many occasions. In this connection I would wish to specially draw your attention to a note from the Secretary of State to the Japanese Ambassador dated Washington, November 2nd, 1917.19
Furthermore the following matter which was dealt with under the present group agreement was reserved by the Japanese group at the time of signature of the Chinese reorganization loan agreement. On the 18th June 1912, at the meeting of the six groups held in Paris when discussing the agreement for the Chinese reorganization loan about to be issued the following declaration was made by Mr. Takeuchi on behalf of the Japanese group and was recorded in the minutes:
The Japanese bank declared that it takes part in the loan on the understanding that nothing connected with the projected loan should operate to the prejudice of the special rights and interests of Japanese in the regions of South Manchuria and of the eastern portion of Inner Mongolia adjacent to South Manchuria.20
I should be very much obliged if you would give the foregoing matter your careful consideration and with my best thanks in advance.’
Tatsumi states himself personally as disagreeing with these views of his Government but as being obliged to present them, as he says, for your (our) careful consideration. Odagiri stated that he and Tatsumi had both presented their views strongly to their Government on this point. Accordingly we have some hopes that Japanese Government may recede from its position but we do not think that there is much cnance of this unless our State Department join with the British and the French Foreign Offices in, taking up a very vigorous position in the matter. We have pointed out again to the Japanese delegates that this position, if persisted in, will mean practical annulment of the whole plan; that it is quite true that Secretary Lansing in the note mentioned alluded to the propinquity of Japan to China, et cetera, but that such allusion was a general one and that it therefore would exclude application to any particular section of Chinese territory, such as Manchuria [or] Mongolia; that the Japanese Government had accepted the principles for the new consortium as laid down in the American note; and that the Japanese representatives had at Paris affixed their preliminary signatures without reserve on the part of their Government and that we were convinced that this new attitude now taken up by the Government would create a most painful impression.
Am leaving tomorrow with House and Auchincloss for Paris, where will confer with Secretary Lansing and Marshall. For my information please cable me, Paris, as to whether in all probability [Page 453] Siems-Carey option for building 1500 miles railway in China will or will not be turned into American group. My own inference has been that inasmuch as American group has no objection to such particular institutions as might be interested with Siems-Carey, inevitably, sooner or later, such option would be turned in.”
- Charles F. Whigham, of Morgan, Grenfell & Co. and representative of American group.↩
- Foreign Relations, 1917, p. 264.↩
- Ibid., 1912, p. 137.↩