The Russian Ambassador to the Secretary of State.
Washington, April 9/22, 1906.
Mr. Secretary of State: I have lost no time in transmitting by cable to Count Lamsdorff the contents of your excellency’s note of the 19th instant. In reply the minister for foreign affairs telegraphs me to-day as follows:
The desire that the newly invited powers be permitted from the outset to participate in the conference is the basis of our project for the settlement of the question of their adhering to the first convention of 1899. If all the signatory powers accept this procedure, the conference will not have to pass upon the question of adhesion. To our mind, the conference will have but to take formal notice of that fact at its first session in which all the powers that have adhered to the second and third conventions and declared their desire to adhere to the first shall be permitted to take part. In any case Russia will use her best efforts toward the most practical and expeditious settlement of the question of the participation of all the invited powers in the conference and on this point entirely shares the ideas of the Government of the United States.
I am at the same time instructed to call the attention of the other governments to which I transmitted Russia’s invitation to the necessity of giving forthwith to the Government of the Netherlands notice of their adhesion to the second and third conventions of 1899, and to be in readiness to notify the same Government of their adhesion to the first as soon as they receive telegraphic advice from us as to the consent of all the powers that took part in the first conference at The Hague.
Be pleased to accept, etc.,