793.94/1974: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Minister in China (Johnson)
361. Your 697, October 4, 8 a.m. Please reply to Acting Minister for Foreign Affairs substantially as follows:
“I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your telegram of October 3 informing me that the Chinese Government has requested the diplomatic representatives in this country of those powers that are members of the Council of the League to send individual representatives to Manchuria to collect information on the progress of evacuation and all relative circumstances for the information of the Council, and requesting that, in view of the fact that the United States is one of the signatories of the Treaty for the Renunciation of War signed at Paris in 1928, the United States take immediate steps to be likewise represented.
I am instructed, in reply, to state that the American Government has noted with gratification the action, to which the Chinese Government refers, of the Council of the League of Nations, on which Council both the Chinese and the Japanese Governments are represented, [Page 116] as expressed in the Resolution unanimously adopted by the Council on September 30; that it has noted the undertakings therein set forth of the various governments represented and of the Council itself, including the provision for the gathering and supplying of information by the Chinese and the Japanese Governments. With regard to the Chinese Government’s request that the American Government send representatives to collect information, the American Government is happy to be able to state that it has already taken steps to supplement the efforts which have been made by its representatives in the Far East to keep it currently informed with regard to developments in this situation. Among these steps, it has recently issued instructions for the sending of two of its officers on duty at other points in the Far East to South Manchuria, to travel in that region, to observe, and to report to their Government on the facts as they find them; and, on October 3, before receipt of the Chinese Government’s request, it had instructed the American Minister to China to inform the Chinese Government of its action in that sense. Its instruction has, as your Excellency knows, been carried out.
The American Government had thus anticipated the Chinese Government’s request and it is confident that the Chinese Government will regard this action on its part as another evidence of its desire to make its due, contribution in the common effort which is being made to ensure reliance on peaceful methods for the settling of this dispute which is clearly a matter of concern to the whole world”.