File No. 763.72/8259
The Ambassador in Russia ( Francis) to the Secretary of State
[Received December 22, 3 p.m.]
2118. Your 1905, December 15, 5 p.m. Have conferred incidentally on the subject with Japanese Ambassador and Chinese Minister both of whom profess fidelity to Allied cause and treat contemptuously all suggestions of separate or even general peace.
Soviet bulletin printing many secret treaties and cables gives to-day under heading “Secret convention between Russia and Japan having in view joint armed action against America and England in the Far East before 1921” and secret treaty of July 3, 1916,1 negotiated by Sazonov and Motono which you will recall I have been endeavoring to get since its execution. It contains six articles the last of which provides “and present convention is to remain the strictest secret for all save the high contracting parties.” Article 1 provides for “preservation of China from political mastery of any third power nourishing hostile intentions against Russia or Japan” and binds signers to exclude possibility thereof.
Article 2 binds each contracting party in the event war is declared by any third power against the other contracting party, to assist and not to make peace without having first received consent of other contracting party.
Article 3 provides that the “ways of realizing such assistance shall be formulated by competent authorities of both contracting parties jointly.”
Article 4 of the treaty provides that article 2 is not binding upon either contracting party beyond “guarantees from its allies that [Page 710] they too will assist it in a manner corresponding according to their resources to the seriousness of the ripening conflict.”
Article 5 of the treaty provides that the treaty enters into effect from the moment of its signature and terminates July 14, 1921, but provides that in case neither party announces twelve months previous to expiration its unwillingness to prolong same then the treaty “shall remain in force until the expiration of one year from the time of the announcement by one of the high contracting parties, that the present convention is denounced.”
Same publication printed sixteen very long confidential cables from the Russian Ambassador Tokyo signed Krupenski to Russian Foreign Office which shall summarize to-morrow: they bear dates from January 26, 1917, to October 19, last, and comment copiously on our Japanese relations referring to visit of Japanese commission to United States.
- See Foreign Relations, 1916, pp. 429 et seq.↩