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[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government,]
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3447
AFFAIRS OF CHINA.
[January 6.]
CONFIDENTIAL.
of 3 FEB !!
SECTION 1.
[46838]
No. 1.
(No. 4.) Sir,
Sir Edward Grey to Sir F. Bertie.
Foreign Office, January 6, 1911.
I HAVE received your Excellency's despatch No. 484 of the 28th ultimo, enclosing a copy of a note from the French Minister for Foreign Affairs on the subject of the China loan for 10,000,000l.
I have read with interest the information furnished to your Excellency by M. Pichon in regard to the proposed appointment of an American financial adviser and other matters connected with the loan, and I conour generally in the views expressed in his Excellency's note.
I authorise you to state in reply that His Majesty's Government are also of opinion that any loan to China is undesirable unless made on the lines of the Inter- group Agreement of the 7th July, 1909, viz., on the principle of absolute equality and equal terms in every respect between the leaders, and that I am not prepared to give diplomatic support to a loan at Peking which does not fulfil these conditions. may add that I understand that the British group is keeping in touch with the French and German groups, and that it desires to act in accordance with them, a course to which we have expressed ourselves favourable.
You
In making the above communication to M. Pichon, it may be well to point out that, however disinclined His Majesty's Government may be to facilitate a loan which might result in the establishment of a foreign financial adviser at Peking, even if only in the limited capacity of controller of the funds of this particular loan, and which might at the same time cause uneasiness to the Russian and Japanese Governments in connection with Manchuria, they have not, like the French Government, the power to prevent British financiers from taking up a part of the loan if it is offered to them, and that even if I were to dissuade one financial house from participating another might do so without consulting the Foreign Office in the matter. Our inability to stop the raising of a loan in this country is and must remain one of the essential factors in this question.
Your Excellency might add that I understand that the American negotiators are meeting with great difficulty in the matter of the adviser in consequence of a promise having been given to the Senate that no such appointment would be made.
In this respect I enclose, for your Excellency's information, copy of a despatch from Sir John Jordan on the subject.*
* Sir J. Jordan, No. 454, December 16, 1910.
[1850 ₤-1]
I am, &c.
E. GREY.