82 J.-A. PEMBERTON
meeting on March 11, 1932, approximately two months after which
Japan would begin evacuating Shanghai, declaring that this was ‘due
to a desire conform with world opinion to end the world-wide odium
which has fallen on us’), was attributable ‘in no small measure to this
circumstance.’^250
In regard to its failure in relation to the Manchurian crisis, Wright
made the general observation that the power and authority of the LON
was greatly impaired due to the absence of Soviet Russia and the United
States from its halls.^251 Even so, Wright thought that the it might still
have been able to successfully resolve the Manchurian crisis had the
United States cooperated more fully with the LON Council during its
early stages. In stating this, Wright was referring to the fact that Stimson
had informed the Japanese ambassador at Washington that the United
States favoured direct negotiations between China and Japan and that
he was not favourable towards American participation in the proposed
commission of inquiry that was under discussion at LON Council at
that time. News of this development reached Geneva on September
24, 1931, and on September 25, Lord Robert Cecil declared on behalf
of Great Britain which, like other council members, was desirous of
American support for the LON’s efforts to resolve the dispute, that he
too favoured direct negotiations.^252
Stimson, in defending his stance some years later, offered the view
that had the LON attempted to dispatch a commission of inquiry dur-
ing the early stages of the crisis it would have ‘accelerated the outbreak
of nationalist feeling which subsequently occurred...[and]...would have
hastened the downfall of the Minseito Cabinet which was at that time
doing its best to check the army’ and called attention to the fact that as it
turned out, Shidehara Kijūrō, the foreign minister, was able to remain in
office until December 10 and ‘eventually to consent on behalf of Japan
to the sending of the Lytton Commission of Enquiry’.^253 Irrespective of
these considerations and echoing a criticism he had made of Stimson’s
action in November 1934 in an address at Chatham House (a criticism
(^251) Wright, ‘The Working of Diplomatic Machinery in the Pacific,’ 427.
(^252) Morley, The Society of Nations, 442.
(^253) Henry L. Stimson, The Far Eastern Crisis: Recollections and Observations (New York:
Harper and Brothers, 1936), 44–5.
(^250) ‘Japan’s Evacuation Aims to End “Odium”,’ New York Times, May 12, 1932, and
Wright, ‘The Working of Diplomatic Machinery in the Pacific,’ 427.