793.94 Conference/177: Telegram
The Chairman of the American Delegation (Davis) to the Secretary of State
[Received November 3—9 p.m.]
15. At the public session today only seven powers elected to speak.69 The substance of Eden’s and Delbos’ speeches followed closely that of mine. The Italian spoke in a defeatist tone saying that it was useless to hope for results in the Conference beyond possibly facilitating direct negotiations between Japan and China. Litvinov warned us of the temptation to make conferences successful by granting aggressors many of their desiderata and persuading victims to accept [Page 156] such a solution. Wellington Koo presented China’s case at length. He gave an account of Japan’s “aggressions” in China, said that all of the powers except Japan had given up the older policy of exploiting China, and that China wanted to cooperate with Japan and also with the other powers. Portugal offered general cooperation.
Tomorrow morning the British, French, Dutch, Russian, Italian and American heads of delegations will meet informally with Spaak to work out procedure for tomorrow afternoon’s private session.
- For texts of speeches, see The Conference of Brussels, pp. 24–45.↩