File No. 861.00/2719a
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Japan (Morris)
In making your observations and in framing your recommendations you will please keep in mind the aims and desires of this Government expressed in the following extracts taken from a memorandum handed to the British, French and Italian Governments at the time that activities in Siberia were decided upon by the United States Government, and of which copies were handed to the Japanese Ambassador and the Chinese Minister in Washington. The policies of the United States Government and the limitations upon its action in Siberia are set forth as follows:
It is the clear and fixed judgment of the Government of the United States that military intervention in Siberia would add to the present sad confusion in Russia rather than cure it, injure Russia rather than help her and that it would be of no advantage in the prosecution of our main design to win the war against Germany. It cannot therefore take part in such intervention or sanction it in principle. Military intervention would in the judgment of the United States Government, even supposing it to be efficacious in its immediate avowed object of delivering an attack upon Germany from the east, be merely a method of making use of Russia and not a method of serving her. Her people could not profit by it, if they profited by it at all, in time to save them from their present distresses and their substance would be used to maintain foreign armies and not to reconstitute their own. As we see it, military action is admissible [Page 373] in Russia only to help the Czecho-Slovaks consolidate their forces and get into successful cooperation with their Slavic kinsmen and to steady any efforts at self-government or self-defense in which the Russians themselves may be willing to accept assistance. The only legitimate object for which American or Allied troops can be employed, in the mind of the United States Government, whether at Vladivostok or at Murmansk and Archangel, is to guard military stores which may subsequently be needed by Russian forces and to render such aid as may be acceptable to the Russians in the organization of their own self-defense. The Government of the United States owes it to frank counsel to say that it can go no further than to participate in and approve of such modest methods and experimental plans as will contribute to the objects indicated above and has no reasonable expectation of being in a position to take part in organized intervention in adequate forces from either Vladivostok or Murmansk and Archangel. It feels that it ought to add also that it will use the few troops it can spare only for the purposes herein stated and shall feel obliged to withdraw these forces if the plans in whose execution it is now intended that they should cooperate should develop into others inconsistent with the policy to which the Government of the United States feels constrained to restrict itself.
It was further announced to be the hope and purpose of this Government to take advantage of the earliest opportunity to send to Siberia a commission of merchants, agricultural experts, labor advisors, Red Cross representatives and agents of the Y.M.C.A. accustomed to organizing the best methods of spreading useful information and rendering educational help of a modest sort, in order in some systematic manner to relieve the immediate economic necessities of the people there in every way for which opportunity may open. However, the execution of the plans to send such a commission will follow and will not be permitted to embarrass such military assistance as the United States in conjunction with the Allied forces will render in line with the policies indicated herein-above.
You will please read very carefully the contents of this cable. It expresses the present policy of this Government in dealing with Siberian and Russian situations. In making your observations you will please keep constantly in mind the policies indicated and in making any recommendations you will please be guided by the expressed wish of this Government to conform to those policies. You may announce briefly the purpose of your visit to Vladivostok having in mind these and previous instructions of September 5.