[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government.]
[B]
AFFAIRS OF CHINA.
CONFIDENTIAL.
3.0. 31428 Ra
[September 22.]
SECTION 1.
10
No. 1.
199
[32420]
Sir Edward Grey to Mr. Bryce.
Foreign Office, September 22, 1910.
(No. 258. Confidential.) Sir,
I HAVE received your Excellency's despatch No. 183, Very Confidential, of the 24th ultimo, reporting that a certain amount of irritation is felt in official circles at Washington at the attitude taken up by His Majesty's Government towards the Chinchow-Aigun Railway, and suggesting that, in the interest of the maintenance of good relations between the two countries, it might be desirable to take any opportunity which presented itself of soothing American susceptibilities in Far Eastern matters, and of making it plain to the United States Government that, whatever the designs of Russia and Japan, His Majesty's Government have no share in any policy unfriendly to the commercial policy of the United States in that part of the world.
Your Excellency is already well aware from communications which have passed with the American Embassy in London, as well as from the answers which I have on more than one occasion returned to members of Parliament on this subject, what is the attitude of His Majesty's Government towards the Chinchow-Aigun Railway.
Japan has expressed her readiness not to oppose the scheme, provided that she is admitted to participation in it as some compensation for the injury the new line might inflict on her railway in South Manchuria. In the case of Russia the situation is somewhat different. There is nothing in the agreement of 1899 between the two countries which affects the right of China to construct what railways she pleases for herself, but there is an understanding on behalf of this country not to seek for British subjects or others any railway concession north of the Great Wall. It has been argued, I know, that the proposed line is not a railway concession in the exact sense of this agreement, and that circumstances have altered since its conclusion eleven years ago; but, nevertheless, Ilis Majesty's Government have felt themselves bound to pay some regard to the spirit of the arrangement, which has never formally been abrogated, and it has therefore been impossible for them not to take into consideration the objections of Russia on economie, strategical, and political grounds to a railway which would actually cross her existing line to Vladivostok, and which would terminate at her frontier.
I have, however, always maintained that the matter was primarily one for arrangement by China with Russia and Japan, and that no useful purpose would have been served by the active intervention of His Majesty's Government. Their attitude has, in fact, been that of an observer; and if China chooses to give the contract for the financing and building of this railway to an American group, His Majesty's Government would remain as heretofore a spectator.
His Majesty's Government are no less in favour than formerly of the "open door" policy in Manchuria, and it has been a matter of considerable regret to them that the ill-timed proposals made by the United States in the winter of 1909-10 for the internationalisation of railways in Manchuria a proposal which, moreover, totally disregarded the legitimate interests of both Russia and Japan as expressly confirmed by the Treaty of Portsmouth, which received the full sanction, and was, indeed, largely due to the initiative, of the United States Government-should have indirectly had the result of rendering the task of keeping the door open in Manchuria increasingly difficult. Nor have the United States Government themselves given us the measure of support in that province which we seemed entitled to receive both on the ground of common interests and our combined action in the past. For instance, in the case of the Russian railway settlement at Harbin, where the two countries have always joined in resisting what they considered the undue pretensions of the Russian railway authorities to levy taxes on foreign residents as well as on Russian subjects, we now learn that the United States Government are ready to acquiesce in the payment of the municipal taxes by American citizens. What the reason for this change of front may be is not clear; but in any case it is an entire reversal of
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