In London Chinese Minister Quo Tai-Chi bustled around to see Sir John Simon at the Foreign Office. Shortly after. U. S. Ambassador Bingham conferred with Minister Quo Tai-Chi. In Washington Sir Ronald Lindsay, British Ambassador, popped in on Stanley K. Hornbeck, Chief of the Division of Far Eastern Affairs at the State Department. Japanese Ambassador Hiroshi Saito visited Undersecretary of State William Phillips, while Secretary of State Hull called on President Roosevelt. In Tokyo British Ambassador Sir Francis Lindley dropped in at the Foreign Office and next day handsome, deaf U. S. Ambassador Joseph Clark Grew went ambling around himself. Harvardman, socialite, longtime Ambassador to Turkey with two daughters married into the service, Ambassador Grew is generally considered the ablest of U. S. career diplomats. He remained closeted for a long time with Foreign Minister Koki Hirota last week in an effort to obtain an official text of the statement on Chinese policy with which Japan startled the Western world fortnight ago.
Having smashed windows and thrown its firecracker—an Asiatic Monroe Doctrine—Japan was waiting with its fingers in its ears for the explosion. But the tramping back & forth of diplomats did much to snuff out the fuse.
Japan's out, of course, was that there was no official text of the statement, as made orally by the Japanese Official Spokesman, Eiji Amau. In Tokyo, therefore, two identical notes were delivered to the British and U. S. Embassies from Foreign Minister Koki Hirota. It was explained that these were Japan's only official utterances on the subject of her policy toward China. Japan withdrew nothing of importance, but there were many soothing omissions. Japan had no intention of abrogating the Nine Power Treaty, or of interfering with the "purely commercial'' interests of other powers in China. Ambassador Saito attempted to smooth matters still further by blandly insisting that the original Amau statement was just exuberant ingenuousness. Said he:
"We Japanese and you Americans are so much alike after all that we ought not to have much difficulty with each other. You greatly admire courage, frankness, straight shooting, as you call it. So do we. . . ."