751G.92/284: Telegram
The Ambassador in Japan (Grew) to the Secretary of State
[Received February 26—10:55 a.m.]
316. In the course of my conversation with the Foreign Minister this morning26I asked him if he would tell me the present status of the negotiations in the dispute between Thailand and Indochina under Japanese mediation. Mr. Matsuoka replied that he had proposed a plan which had not been found acceptable and that he had then proposed a second plan which had now been submitted to the Governments at Bangkok and Vichy respectively. The Minister said that he considered this second plan eminently reasonable and that if it should not be accepted by both parties he frankly did not know what further could be done.
The Minister then indulged in an impassioned diatribe against alleged British intrigue in Thailand in which, the Minister said, [Page 94] British propaganda had incited the Thais to most unreasonable demands. He said that the British Government could now make a “masterly stroke” for peace if it would issue a public statement urging moderation upon the Thais and Mr. Matsuoka hoped that I would make this suggestion to the British Ambassador here. I asked the Minister whether he authorized me to repeat this entire conversation to Sir Bobert Craigie and he replied in the affirmative.
Owing to the illness of the British Ambassador I communicated the foregoing to the Counselor of the British Embassy, making clear the fact that I was undertaking to do no more than to report the conversation, just as the Ambassador is in the habit of reporting similar conversations to me. The Counselor characterized the charge that the British had been intriguing in Thailand as a piece of “impertinence”. He quoted the British Minister in Bangkok as having reported that similar charges in the Japanese press are “a tissue of lies from beginning to end”.
Sent to the Department, repeated to Bangkok.
- February 26.↩