Office of the Historian

893.796 Curtiss/26: Telegram

The Secretary of State to the Minister in China (MacMurray)

Washington, April 6, 1929—1 p.m.

121. Your 263, April 4, 8 p.m.99 Department in conversations with representatives of Curtiss1 project took the position that it had no objection to exportation of commercial planes and it informally approved in principle the Company’s outlined intention to compete for a commercial contract. The Department and the Company did not enter into any agreement. The Department subsequently approved application for license to export four planes for “demonstration of airplanes in China.” The proposal now presented amounts to a request that the Department expressly approve rental or sale of planes, for what is obviously a military purpose. In view of the Agreement of 19192 and the Executive Order of 1922,3 the Department can give no approval and cannot allow itself to be associated with this particular proposed transaction. Department is so informing Curtiss Company. You will so inform its representatives.

Stimson
  1. Not printed.↩
  2. The Curtiss Aeroplane Export Corporation, Garden City, L. I., and New York, and the Aviation Exploration, Inc. (Del.), New York.↩
  3. See note dated May 5, 1919, from the Senior Minister in China to the Chinese Minister for Foreign Affairs, Foreign Relations, 1919, vol. i, p. 670.↩
  4. See proclamation No. 1621 by President Harding, March 4, 1922, ibid., 1922, vol. i, p. 726.↩