The Japanese Ambassador asked to see me again today.
'•2 He began by referring to our previous conversation,
since which he said the new Prime Minister had assumed office.
He thought that he would pursue much the same policy as Prince
Konoye.     They were still anxious to reach an understanding
with the United States Government.
He said that Mr. Wakasugi was having exploratory
conversations with Mr. Welles, but that he feared they were only
making slow progress.     I asked him whether it was still the
case that it was the third point of which he had spoken in our
last interview concerning temporary occupation by Japanese troops
in North China and Mongolia that was likely to be the most obstinate.
He said this was so, and expressed the opinion that the United
States Government feared that such occupation would be permanent.
This however was not his view, but after all that had happened,
the Japanese Government thought that their nationals and traders
in North China would receive bad treatment from the Chinese unless
for some time there was some Japanese protection at hand.
I said that I was of course interested in what he had
said, and that the conclusion of it seemed to me to show the
great importance of all parties at such a time as this exercising
patience.     Only so was there any hope of improving relations.
At the present moment the Japanese Government must know that in
whatever direction they might make a rash move, whether South or
North, this might well have Immediate and incalculable consequences.
On the other hand, as I had told him a fortnight ago,
there was no desire in Great Britain, and certainly I thought none
in the United States, to pick trouble with Japan, and the drawing
together of all those who felt themselves threatened by Japanese
policy was purely defensive.     When there was so much gunpowder
lying about, he would be a very rash man who dropped a match.
3
speech last night, there was some shooting between the Germans
and the  -mericans, the Ambassador said that, as he understood it,
the Japanese would be quite free to decide their own course of
action.
I expressed the view that the Japanese Government
would certainly be wise to consult Japanese interests and not
German interests, just as the Ambassador must realise that all
Hitler's action were dictated solely by regard for what he
conceived to be German interests.
I added that I had never been able to understand what
good Japan thought the Tri-Partite Pact could possibly do them,
compared with an understanding with the United States and Great
Britain, both of whom had effective interests in the Pacific.
The Ambassador, whether from politeness or conviction,
expressed general agreement, and concluded by a soliloquy on the
impossibility of force providing permanent solution for large
international questions, as he thought within a very few years
Hitler would himself learn.
The general impression that the Ambassador produced
upon me was that he was genuinely anxious to avoid trouble, but
I could detect nothing in his conversation that gave me any secure
indication of why he had asked to see me.
28th October, 19U1     *7"~ ^'W/^ -6^.^^