793.94/2817: Telegram
The Chargé in France (Shaw) to the Secretary of State
[Received 2:18 a.m.]
777. From Ambassador Dawes: The Chinese position on evacuation measures which should accompany a commission’s appointment still remains unchanged. However, since you telephoned I have communicated the information you authorized me to give to Sze with, I believe, good effect.
Through the Secretary-General I am informed confidentially that at the present moment the proposal for an inquiry commission takes the following form, in which it is being transmitted by Yoshizawa to his Government at Tokyo:73
“The Council having noted the declarations made and communication[s] presented [by] the representatives of China and Japan in the course of the proceedings of the Council in regard to the appeal of China under article 11 of the Covenant:
Decides to appoint a commission of 10 members to study on the spot and to report to the Council on any circumstance arising out of the said declarations and communications affecting the relations between China and Japan which threatens to disturb international peace or the good understanding between the two nations upon which peace depends.
Each Government will have the right to indicate to the chairman of the commission any question, falling within its terms of reference as defined above, the examination of which it particularly desires.”
Regarding the above, Sweetser reports as follows:
The resolution was put in this form for the purpose of limiting the commission to matters which were covered by declarations and communications made in the course of the current dispute. The commission would thereby be saved from taking up every problem in the field of relations between the two countries.
Also, each Government would be given the right to raise any question it wished. Thus a general discussion would be avoided here and complete liberty would be allowed later. If they desired, the Japanese could raise the boycott question; similarly, the Chinese could raise [Page 530] the compensation question. Neither would therefore have to argue now the question of what the commission should discuss.
A wide geographical latitude would also be given the commission by its being permitted to carry on its studies “on the spot”. By this phrase Nanking, Peiping, Mukden, and Tokyo are included.
The original Japanese suggestion was a commission of five members: American, British, French, Chinese, and Japanese. However, it has been suggested that it would be better for the Chinese and Japanese to be assessors instead of members.
Elaborated as a result of considerable discussion with the Japanese, this text is considered a great improvement on the original Japanese idea, which, limited to China’s internal conditions only, would not have been acceptable to the Chinese and probably would have failed of recommendation by the other Council members.
If this text is approved by the Japanese and Chinese Governments, it would be embodied as a part of the general resolution which would embrace not only the commission idea but the ideas also of the September 30 resolution on cessation of hostilities and Japanese evacuation. The chief difficulty at present is to find an arrangement respecting evacuation which will satisfy public sentiment in both Japan and China. However, the Japanese have stated that the two ideas, commission and evacuation, are separate and that evacuation might occur as other conditions allowed and without relation to the commission.
Two other suggestions have been made in this connection: (1) that to bridge the time needed to constitute the commission and for it to proceed to the spot, the gathering of essential materials might possibly be begun at once; and (2) that to obviate the long delay until the final report is made by the commission, the latter might be empowered to submit interim reports regarding any specific aspects of the subject which it might think useful to complete at an earlier date.
- [Dawes]
- Shaw
- Quotation not paraphrased.↩