393.1164/220
The Consul at Foochow (Ward) to the Ambassador in China (Johnson)68
Sir: I have the honor to refer to this Consulate’s despatch No. 12, dated December 16, 1937,66 on the subject of the projected removal of missionary schools from Foochow to the interior, and further in that connection to enclose a copy of a memorandum of a conversation between Bishop John Gowdy of the Methodist Episcopal Mission and myself on that subject.*
The Embassy will not from the perusal of this memorandum that the Provincial Government here would now appear to have given up its immediate plan for the removal of schools from Foochow to the interior, in favor of one contemplating a rigorous course in propaganda activities which will employ higher middle school and college students from the close of the schools at the end of this term through the month of April, and in the course of which girls and boys alike will go into the villages of Foochow’s hinterland to preach Chinese nationalism and the necessity for resistance to Japan to the peasantry of Northern Fukien.
This change in the Government’s plan brought to a sharp issue the question of the use of American missionary property for purely patriotic purposes by the Chinese administrations of the schools to [Page 426] which the property had been loaned, the president of Hwa Nan College having been simply informed by the Government of its intention to use the school for the training of students in anti-Japanese propaganda. Copies of a letter† from Bishop John Gowdy and its enclosure‡ describing the situation are enclosed.
The following day I received a further communication from the Bishop in the same general connection, informing me that from December 18 to December 21 two hundred members of the Peace Preservation Corps, who were holding manoeuvres in the vicinity of the Fukien Christian University, had used the dormitories of that university as provisional barracks.
There is also enclosed a copy of this Consulate’s reply to these communications.§
It seems clear to this Consulate that the closing by the Chinese administrations which run them of the schools and colleges which are now housed in American-owned properties in Foochow will greatly simplify the question of the protection of those properties by the Consulate in the event of a Japanese invasion of the Province. If, however, the properties vacated by the schools which they originally housed were to be turned over to the Chinese authorities to house propaganda-training groups or, worse still, members of militia or other armed bodies, the protection of those properties would become for all practical purposes absolutely impossible. The Consulate therefore intends to do everything it possibly can to prevent American properties from being so used, and will continue to keep the Embassy informed of the progress of its efforts.
Respectfully yours,
- Copy transmitted to the Department by the Consul at Foochow in his despatch No. 16, December 29; received February 2, 1938.↩
- Not printed.↩
- See Enclosure No. 1. [Footnote in the original; enclosure not printed.]↩
- See Enclosure No. 2. [Footnote in the original; enclosure not printed.]↩
- See Enclosure No. 3. [Footnote in the original; enclosure not printed.]↩
- See Enclosure No. 4. [Footnote in the original; enclosure not printed.]↩