[A]
[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government.]
AFFAIRS OF CHINA.
CONFIDENTIAL.
[14301]
No. 1.
[April 27.]
SECTION 2.
Mr. Bryce to Sir Edward Grey.-(Received April 27.)
(No. 136. Confidential.) Sir,
Washington, April 15, 1908,
IN continuation of my despatch No. 133 of the 11th instant, I have the honour to inform you that in the course of conversation with Mr. Root on Saturday, the 11th instant, the subject of Manchuria happening to come up, Mr. Root stated concisely the position of his Government in the question which has arisen at Harbin.
The Russian railroad authorities there were, he conceived, making regulations which went a good way beyond the powers given them by the Chinese Concession. The Chinese Government declared that the word "administration" in the French text of the Concession did not properly translate what the Chinese text had been intended to confer, viz., a power of railway management, which would cover the doing of all things connected with the management of the railway, but nothing more. The Russians were claiming under this Concession to establish a sort of jurisdiction which would seriously infringe upon and displace the powers and jurisdiction which belonged to the foreign Consuls. This the United States Government could in no way recognize. The Russian pretensions would practically draw a sort of band of sovereignty over Manchuria. If Russia were allowed to do this, the Japanese, possessing a similar railway Concession, would claim to do the same along their part of the railway system. This would be much to the prejudice both of the United States and Great Britain, whose interests in resisting any such assumption were, he conceived, the same.
I have, &c.
(Signed) JAMES BRYCE,
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