793.94/2764: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Chargé in France (Shaw)
586. For Ambassador Dawes: No. 764, November 18, midnight, from the Embassy. With reference to the statement by Yoshizawa that “China had even sought to bring up at Washington the treaty embodying the 21 demands which Mr. Hughes had recognized”, I call your attention to the fact that the then Secretary of State appears to have neither recognized nor denied the validity of the 1915 treaties between China and Japan. Secretary Hughes, at the Washington Conference (as stated in my 328, November 11, 5 p.m., to you in London), reaffirmed this Government’s reservations made in 1915 in connection with the negotiations and agreements of that year between the Chinese and Japanese Governments. It was also stated by Secretary Hughes that this Government would claim, under the most-favored-nation clause of American treaties with China, equal rights for American citizens with Japanese nationals in South Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia. The Secretary then stated that “I may pause here to remark that the question of the validity of treaties as between Japan and China is distinct from the question of the treaty rights of the United States under its treaties with China.”
- Quotations not paraphrased.↩