711.9412Anti-War/30
Memorandum by the Under Secretary of State (Olds) of a Conversation With the Japanese Chargé (Sawada), June 12, 1928
Mr. Sawada made an appointment at his own suggestion yesterday. He opened by saying that after his conversation with the Secretary last Friday he had talked again with Mr. Castle,78 who [Page 85] had told him that if Japan desired to suggest any modifications in the text of the proposed multilateral treaty, we should be notified of such modifications as soon as possible. He had accordingly wired his Government and had a reply, the substance of which he wished to state. For the present there were two modifications which his Government would like to put forward, it being understood that further suggestions might be made later on after the whole matter had been considered by the Cabinet in Japan.
- 1.
- The word “office” appearing in the opening paragraph of the Preamble does not seem to be an appropriate term to designate the Emperor who, under the Japanese Constitution, has the full authority to make treaties. Office may mean an administrative organ or bureau. I said this did not seem to me a very serious objection. If there was any ambiguity, I had no doubt it could be straightened out by a slight change of wording, or by substituting some other word. At any rate we would take the suggestion into consideration. Mr. Sawada went on to express his own idea of what might be done. He said that the whole phrase, including the word office, might be eliminated so that this part of the Preamble should read “deeply sensible that it is our solemn duty, etc”.
- 2.
- They would like to strike out the words “in the case [names] of their respective peoples” where they appear in Article I of the treaty. Here again he said the objection was on constitutional grounds. In Japan, the entire power is in the Emperor and not in the people. I said this seemed to be rather a technical point. The phrase had no constitutional or legal meaning for us and I did not see how any such signification could really be attributed to it. He replied that the Privy Council of Japan, which had been considering the treaty, comprised a good many lawyers, and that they were probably viewing the situation in a technical light. I told him that in our consideration of this treaty we would not be disposed to listen very much to jurists. This was not that kind of treaty. On the whole, I thought we should like to keep the phrase in question, and expressed the hope that on reflection Japan would agree with us that it was good material. However, I said we would also take into consideration this second suggestion.
The Chargé again reserved the right to make further suggestions in case the Cabinet of his Government desired to make them. Pie thought it improbable that any further suggestions would be made.
Mr. Sawada concluded by referring to the arbitration and conciliation treaties.79 He said that his Government was inclined to suspend action on them until some conclusion was reached on the multilateral treaty. I expressed some surprise at this, and said that we [Page 86] had not thought there was any such connection between the two operations as to make one at all contingent upon the other. We were quite ready to go ahead with the arbitration and conciliation treaties and were doing so with all other Governments. We saw no reason why this should not be done. He said he would be glad to convey that view to his Government. He agreed that it would he desirable to complete the arbitration treaty before next August when the existing treaty expires. He wanted to know if I thought the multilateral treaty would be signed soon. I said I could not make any forecast on that, but that we were hopeful of an early termination of the negotiations.
- William R. Castle, Jr., Assistant Secretary of State.↩
- See vol. iii, pp. 135 ff.↩