740.0011 European War 1939/14308
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Secretary of State
The Ambassador of China called at his request. He first handed me a copy of a statement of his Foreign Minister on August eighteenth at Chungking (copy attached)73 approving for the Chinese Government the declaration of President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill.74 I expressed the very great gratification of my Government in this regard and added I knew that it would be gratifying to the President to whom I would at once send a copy. He expressed his pleasure that China was the first government to ratify and approve the Roosevelk–Churchill statement. I again complimented and congratulated his Government.
The Ambassador then tactfully and somewhat delicately referred to the conferences between the United States and Great Britain and the planned conferences between the United States, Great Britain and Soviet Russia, together with reports about the supposed agreements entered into and to be entered into for defense on the part of each against military aggression. The Ambassador said that his Government felt a little regretful and disappointed that China was scarcely mentioned in any manner whatever with possibly one exception, and that this was discouraging. I replied that I and all of us were sorry about this; that it was not intentional on the part of any high official of the Government and especially the President; that we have striven to show our deep and sustained interest in aiding [Page 709] China and in seeing China succeed in resisting the Japanese and that we expect to do this increasingly as time goes on.
I then said to the Ambassador that, off the record, I would like to say to him that some of us have already been giving attention to the point about the supposed neglect of China and finding ways to re-emphasize strongly the interest of this Government in China and in aiding it increasingly in its military resistance of Japan. The Ambassador expressed himself as greatly relieved to hear this. I inquired if his Government proposed to hold on indefinitely in its military resistance of Japan and he spoke with confidence to the effect that it unquestionably would.
The Ambassador then said he had noticed in the press how this Government was proposing to ferry military airplanes from Brazil to Freetown, a distance of some eighteen hundred miles. He said he would like for my Government to keep in mind the fact that it was not over fourteen or fifteen hundred miles from the Philippine Islands to Kwei-lin in the province of Kwangsi, which is not occupied by the Japanese, and that he hoped this Government would keep this in mind relating to any plans to get airplanes to China. I tactfully recalled to the Ambassador that we have probably 100 expert mechanics in China together with a great many other persons who are fliers and instructors, and that I would be interested to know how fast his Government could really train the Chinese to fly and fight with efficiency. The Ambassador said he did not know about this. I replied that many of the finest planes we have sent abroad for fighting purposes have been promptly wrecked by those who thought they had become efficient but who underestimated the extreme delicacy of the machinery of many of the planes.
- Vol. iv, p. 377.↩
- Declaration of the Atlantic Charter released to the press August 14, Department of State Bulletin, August 14, 1941, p. 125.↩