C 0.
[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government,
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AFFAIRS OF CHINA.
CONFIDENTIAL.
Reci
7 JUL 08
[June 23.]
SECTION 2.
[21596]
(No. 248.) Sir,
No. 1.
Sir F. Bertie to Sir Edward Grey.-(Received June 23.)
Paris, June 21, 1908. I HAD an interview with the Minister for Foreign Affairs yesterday evening, in order to carry out the instructions contained in your despatch to me No. 266 of the 18th instant with regard to the inclusion in the demands of the French Minister at Peking for satisfaction for the murder of a French officer and soldiers on the Yunnan frontier of the grant of the right to extend the Chengting Taiyuan-fu Railway to Hsian-fu.
Your despatch No. 124 of the 19th instant had forwarded to me a copy of a telegram of the preceding day from His Majesty's Minister at Peking, giving an account of a conversation which he had had with his French colleague on the subject of this demand.
I told M. Pichon that His Majesty's Minister at Peking had been informed by the Chinese Government that this demand had been made, and His Majesty's Government considered that there was some danger that it might be regarded as a revival of the international competition for Concessions, and that it might.interfere with the chances of obtaining the Concession for the construction of the proposed Anglo-French Railway from Hankow to Szechuan. I said that the French Minister at Peking had stated to his British colleague that, whereas the French authorities had done much to restrain the Chinese revolutionaries in Tonquin, the Chinese had maintained unfriendly officials in Yunnan, and the time had arrived to ask China to make some amends by the grant of a request put forward some time ago, and he had mentioned as a parallel case the pressure by the British Legation for the Chekiang Railway. The case was, however, not of a like kind, for the Chekiang negotiations were for the fulfilment of a written Agreement entered into in 1898, and the result was by no means equivalent to the I further Railway Concessions which France had obtained in Yünnan in that year. pointed out to M. Pichon that, in view of the action of the French Legation, the Chinese would attribute a political character to it to the prejudice of the purely industrial character with which the Anglo-French combination had been invested, and to the advantage of rival schemes.
M. Pichon assured me that it was far from his wish to do anything to the prejudice of the Anglo-French combination. On the receipt from the French Minister at Peking of his telegraphic report of his conversation with his British colleague, M. Pichon had telegraphed to him not to make the extension of the railway to Hsian-fu one of the His French demands for reparation for the murder of the French officer and soldiers. Excellency had instructed M. Bapst only to intimate to the Chinese Government that if they accorded the extension of the line they would find the French Government accommodating ("bien disposé") in regard to a settlement of the matter of the murders. In consequence of what I had said to his Excellency on the part of His Majesty's Government he would at once telegraph to Peking directing the French Minister to avoid any step which could be taken as giving a political complexion to the suggestion which M. Bapst had made regarding the extension of the railway.
(Confidential.)
It is probable that M. Bapst, like unto many French officials, thought to go one better than the French Government with the expectation of reaping his reward if successful in obtaining that for which he had asked more insistently than he had been authorized to do by the French Government.
I have, &c.
[1819 x-2]
(Signed)
FRANCIS BERTIE.