Mr. Hitchcock to Mr. Day.
St. Petersburg, September 3, 1898.
Sir: I have the honor to confirm a telegram I have just sent you giving the result of an interview I had with his excellency Count Mouravieff: an hour ago, the object of the interview being to obtain from him a fuller explanation of the object and programme of the conference in which our Government was asked to participate, by the invitation of His Imperial Majesty the Czar, inclosed to you with my No. 135 of August 26.
Count Mouravieff’s absence at Moscow for the past ten days at the ceremonies attending the inauguration of the statue of His Late Imperial Majesty Alexander the Second has prevented my obtaining an earlier expression of his excellency’s views, to-day telegraphed you, and which it was impossible for me to obtain when the invitation was handed to me, as the audiences granted to the diplomatic corps upon that occasion were necessarily very brief in view of his contemplated immediate departure for Moscow.
I have, etc.,