AN AMERICAN EDITOR CALLS AT THE AMERICAN EMBASSY 301

AN AMERICAN EDITOR, NOW SERVING TIME FOR PRO-
JAPANESE ACTIVITIES, CALLS AT THE AMERICAN
EMBASSY

October 24, 1940

In view of the statements in the Japanese press reported to have
been made by Mr. Walker Matheson, publisher of the Living Age
and a member of the editorial board of Current History-, I asked Mr.
Matheson to call at the Embassy to-day. I told him that from
earliest childhood I remembered having sometimes climbed on the
big table in the hall of our family house and still remember finding
on it a pile of the issues of a single magazine. It was the only one
we could afford in those days, the Living Age, and out of sentiment
I myself had later subscribed to it for many years. I introduced the
subject in this way in order to show to Mr. Matheson that I was
interested in his periodical, and therefore naturally interested in its
publisher, and with this background I felt that I could without any
misunderstanding frankly approach the matter which I had in
mind.

During the past eight years I had worked steadily to improve
Japanese-American relations, but these relations had unfortunately
now assumed a state of great tenseness, and that especially during
the present period the utterances of American citizens were very
carefully scanned by the Japanese in order to appraise the attitude
of the American Government and people towards Japan. At this
difficult moment Mr. Matheson had come to Japan and had made
statements to the Japanese press which, when carefully examined,
conveyed the impression (i) that the American people were in
general ignorant of the Far East, (2) that the policy and recent
measures of the American Government were predicated upon the
domestic political situation and their effect on the coining election,
and (3) that the American people were not in accordance with that
policy and those measures.

I said to Mr. Matheson that in the United States we highly prized
the privilege of free press and free speech, but that when an American
citizen comes abroad especially at a time of political tension it is
distinctly disloyal and unpatriotic to convey to a foreign people
adverse criticism of his own Government and its policy and measures.
I said that Mr. Matheson's reported utterances were aimed directly
against the work that I was trying to do here, and tended to undo
that work by creating an impression precisely contrary to the im-
pression which I myself had been trying to convey. Such utterances
could therefore be most harmful to American interests. I fully
recognized the fact that visitors were often incorrectly quoted in the
Japanese press, but I had heard no denial of the accuracy of Mr.
Matheson's utterances as reported. I appealed to him as a loyal
American to give out no further statements of that nature.