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Memorandum by the
Secretary of State Regarding a Conversation With the Japanese Ambassador (Saito)
[Extracted]
[WASHINGTON,] May 16, 1934.
In accordance with his personal request made
of me prior to the middle of April for a confidential and purely informal
conversation about affairs as they exist between his Government and the
Government of the United States, I met the Japanese Ambassador at my apartments
in the Carlton Hotel by appointment this morning.
I remarked that we were living in a highly
civilized age, and that my country, for example, was exerting every effort as
rapidly as possible to condemn, repudiate, and discard any and every practice,
policy; or utterance that might be reasonably calculated to give just or
reasonable grounds of complaint to any other people or country; that it was our
attitude to condemn and abandon just as rapidly as possible a number of
practices towards different Latin American countries which had given rise to
friction, misunderstanding, and ill-will between our country and those
affected; that human progress and civilization called for just such reforms and
that this was the way my government and my people felt; and that we had no
notion of turning back to those irritating and trouble-breeding methods which
at times my government had applied to different countries in Latin America.
I commented further, at the same time
emphasizing that I was only offering this comment in the form of an inquiry
which at present did not call for an answer, on the grave crisis in almost
every conceivable way through which the world was passing; and remarked that
some months ago an American citizen stepped into an aeroplane and sailed away,
but that inside of eight days after flying around the world and over Japan, the
Ambassador's own country, this same American alighted back at the station in
the United States from which he had started; that formerly, and until very
recently, England, for example, h. d felt herself isolated and secure from any
ordinary interference with the Channel between her and Western Europe, whereas
it was now patent that a fleet of 2000 bombing planes, probably carrying
explosives of infinitely more powerful force than any heretofore used, could
with perfect ease and convenience fly from many of the capitals of Western
Europe to London, blow that city off the map, and return
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within a few hours time to their base. I said that twenty years ago no
human being with the wildest stretch of imagination could have visualized the
smallest part of the amazing changes that had taken place in every part of the
world during this period, and that only the Lord could begin to visualize the
even more startling changes that might reasonably take place during the next
twenty years; that amidst these amazing changes the more highly civilized
nations had correspondingly greater responsibilities and duties, both from the
standpoint of their own progress and well-being and that of the world, that
could not be dodged or evaded; and that no notion need for a moment be
entertained that my country, or his, or any other one country, no matter how
highly civilized, could securely keep itself above the much lower level of
world affairs, leaving them and all of the people of other countries to undergo
a steady state of decline and even collapse, without that civilized nation
itself being drawn down in the vortex.
I stated that this meant that since there
were no two more highly civilized countries than Japan and the United States,
their own self-preservation, as well as their world responsibility, called for
the utmost breadth of view and the profoundest statesmanship that their biggest
and ablest statesmen could offer; that, faced with these unprecedented problems
and conditions, it was all-important that his statesmen and mine should be
broad-gauged enough to understand each other's problems and conditions, as well
as those of the world, and to have the disposition and the will to deal with
them in such capable manner as would avoid misunderstanding or material
differences and promote both national and world progress; and that in no other
way could countries like Japan and the United States, which were at present the
trustees of the greatest civilization in history, make such showing as would
give them a creditable place in the future history of the world. I said that,
of course, Great Britain and other countries had their wonderful civilization,
which I was not even remotely minimizing, but that Great Britain in particular
was at present, and would be perhaps for some time to come, deeply engrossed
with the serious and dangerous political, economic, and peace problems in
Western Europe.
I repeated from time to time that I was only
commenting in a general and inquiring way, and the Ambassador indicated his
agreement with my utterances without elaborating upon them. I further commented
in the way of professed inquiry that in all of these circumstances—together
with another important circumstance, which was that Japan with her 65 million
people was surrounded by over
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a billion of the world's population which was living chiefly in a very
primitive condition, and that the economic, social, and political
rehabilitation of all these peoples involved vast needs of capital and of other
phases of material cooperation, with the result that these needs were and would
be so vast that no one country could supply them within a number of
generations—I was wondering, therefore, as to just how rapidly Japan would deem
it either necessary or wise to expand with her commerce. I left the implication
broad enough to include political and other kinds of expansion. I then
elaborated just a little further about the huge undertaking that would be
involved, and said that in the meantime nobody could predict what would be
happening to the world in an infinite number of ways which would call for the
utmost cooperation on the part of civilized nations.
C[ORDELL] H [ULL]