893.512/475: Telegram
The Minister in China (MacMurray) to the Secretary of State
[Received December 19—11:20 a.m.]
628. 1. British Chargé d’Affaires yesterday under instructions of his Government had Senior Minister urgently summon a meeting of the interested Chiefs of Mission to whom he read and gave copies of a statement in behalf of the British Government, of which the general purport is that the powers should grant the Washington surtaxes immediately and unconditionally and recognize China’s “right to enjoy tariff autonomy as soon as she herself has settled and promulgated a new national tariff,” act at once upon such recommendations of the Extraterritoriality Commission report as may be capable of being carried into immediate effect, and “while calling upon China to maintain that respect for the sanctity of treaties which is the primary obligation common to all civilized states,” yet “recognize both the essential justice of China’s claim for treaty revision, and the difficulty in present conditions of negotiating new treaties in place of the old” and therefore “modify their traditional attitude of a rigid insistence on the strict letter of treaty rights.”
2. It is understood that full texts of this statement are being communicated by the British Government to the interested Governments.
3. I shall shortly submit my own comments upon the British proposals.