3.
199
but I do not agree that we should restrict those supplies which this government is able to obtain by reason of our [gp.und. ] neutrality.
Our League obligations permit us to sympathise with incessant difficulties of Chinese government and this attitude seems to have full support of current popular opinion in Great Britain. Though we should not go out of our way to provoke Japan nothing is to be gained by attempting to placate her. British interests in Japanese dominated territory would receive no more consideration simply because we had thrown over central government. Japanese find us in their way all along the line. Our only fault is that we got there first. We are feeling their pressure at a hundred points and a policy of weak conciliation will not get us anywhere.
I hold further that it is to our definite advantage to break Japanese stronglehold on Chinese coastline by encourag- ing building up line of communication
P
road rail and air
across Chinese Western frontier. Internal communication system in West China is expanding rapidly under impulse of government war needs and I believe it important to our future trade to link up this system with Burma at as many points as possible.
Addressed to Foreign Office, repeated to Mission and Saving to Peking.