[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government.]
CO
AFFAIRS OF CHINA.
CONFIDENTIAL.
[39871]
No. 1.
500
[December 17
SECTION 2.
IP 24 DEC 07
(No. 580.) Sir,
Sir F. Bertie to Sir Edward Grey.-(Received December ỗ.)
Paris, December 4, 1907.
I HAVE the honour to transmit to you herewith copy of a note which I addressed on the 30th ultimo to the French Government, in the sense of your despatch No. 673 of the 26th November, on the subject of the dispute between the Chinese Engineering and Mining Company and the French authorities in China.
M. le Ministre,
I have, &c.
(Signed) FRANCIS BERTIE.
Inclosure 1 in No. 1.
Sir P. Bertie to M. Pichon.
Paris, November 30, 1907. I DID not fail to forward to His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs copy of your Excellency's note dated the 4th July last in which you transmitted to me a Memorandum containing the views of the French Government in regard to the question at issue between the Chinese Engineering and Mining Company and the French authorities in China.
The Memorandum contained proposals for a settlement of the question, and your Excellency expressed the desire that they should be communicated to the parties interested, at the same time stating that you would glad to learn the views of His Majesty's Government with regard thereto.
The views and proposals of the French Government have been put before the representatives of the Company, and they, have, in their turn, communicated to Sir Edward Grey a statement, in answer to those contained in the Memorandum above mentioned, the substance of which I have the honour to transmit to you here- with. Your Excellency will observe that the statement of the Company traverses the version of the facts given in the Memorandum, as well as the assumptions on which the case appears to rest. The Company urge that some arrangement should be come to with the French authorities similar to those already concluded by the Company with the German and Japanese Governments. They state that they are precluded from accepting the proposals of the French Government, not only on account of the very material loss which their acceptance would involve, but also because they are pledged to the British, Japanese, and German Governments to equality of treatment in all respects for their respective nationals, and are therefore unable to come to an arrangement with the French Government by which French citizens would be placed at an advantage over those of any other State.
The Company state with regard to the effect on the contract between the old and the new Companies of a decision of the Corps Diplomatique at its meeting on the 5th November, 1900, to which allusion is made in the ninth and tenth paragraphs of the Memorandum inclosed in your Excellency's note of the 4th July, that this decision of the Diplomatic Corps referred exclusively to land at Peking, and in this connec- tion, I have the honour to inform your Excellency that His Majesty's Minister at Peking has reported in a similar sense to His Majesty's Government, and has transmitted to Sir Edward Grey an extract from the procès-verbal of the meeting of the Diplomatic Corps on the 5th November, 1900, which I inclose herein, and which shows conclusively that the decision referred solely to purchases of land in the neigh- bourhood of the Legation quarter at Peking.
Sir Edward Grey instructs me to urge that the French Government should accept some settlement of the question on lines similar to those of the arrangements concluded by the Company with the German and Japanese Governments.
I have, &c. (Signed) FRANCIS BERTIE
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