Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, With the Annual Message of the President Transmitted to Congress December 5, 1905

The Russian Ambassador to the Secretary of State.

Russian Imperial Embassy,
Washington, October 5, 1905.

Personal.]

My dear Mr. Secretary: The inclosed is the text of the communication I have just been instructed to hand to the representatives of those South American governments with whom we have no diplomatic relations.

The text of the Emperor’s message to the President I had the honor to deliver to him personally and left it in his hands.

You will see from the inclosed paper that it is merely a preliminary inquiry such as has been sent to all other governments. Count Lamsdorff in his dispatch forwarding to me the original says in a post scriptum that formal invitations to the Second Peace Conference will be issued subsequently when the consent of all governments to the proposal shall have been received and when it will be possible to fix a date for the meeting of the conference.

The reason I mentioned the matter to-day was that when I transmitted by cable the President’s most graceful and gratifying reply to His Majesty’s message, I added, in conformity with what the President told me, that a formal reply would be made after you had entered upon the discharge of your duties as Secretary of State early in October.

Yours, sincerely,

Rosen.

[Inclosure.]

In view of the termination of the war and the conclusion of peace between Russia and Japan, His Majesty the Emperor, as initiator of the International Peace Conference of 1899, considers that the time has come for a further development of the labors of that international conference.

With this end in view, His Imperial Majesty, having ascertained that President Roosevelt is in sympathy with his undertaking, addresses to the Government of— –a proposal to take part in a new International Peace Conference which could be called together at The Hague as soon as favorable replies could be received from other governments to whom similar proposals are communicated.

As the late war has given rise to several extremely important questions closely related to the acts of the first conference, the plenipotentiaries of Russia at the next conference will submit a detailed programme which could serve as a starting point for the labors of the conference.