861.77/617: Telegram
The Minister in China ( Reinsch ) to the Acting Secretary of State
[Received January 17, 1919, 3:50 a.m.]
Following from [Harris at] Omsk.
“26. January 15, 2 p.m. On evening of January 13, the Council of Ministers, Provisional Government, invited the representatives of Foreign Powers to be present at the meeting, in order to make a statement concerning the Siberian Railway. The object of the meeting was not to discuss the question itself but merely to state the decision the Government had arrived at. Substance of this decision was as follows.
The Council of the Ministers recognized that the situation of the railway management has become threatening and exceptional measures must be taken. The management of the railway cannot be undertaken by the Government on account of impossibility to sustain budget expense, absence of telegraph equipment. The cooperation of a foreign affairs specialist is a necessity. If the railway is left in its present fashion, task will become precarious and Bolshevism strengthened. The Russian Government applies to the Allies because it feels that they are interested in the destruction of Bolshevism, and because of the avowed intentions of the Allies to assist in the economic regeneration of Russia. I am informed the Government has decided in favor of the project agreed upon by most of the Allied Governments, which provides that their railways shall be regulated and controlled by a special Inter-Allied Committee and that the general management shall be confined to Mr. Stevens. The Council of Ministers charges the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and [of] Ways and Communications with the task of taking necessary [Page 242] measures for the conclusion of negotiations with representatives of the Allied nations for the management of the railways on the basis of the project already agreed upon.
My opinion of this meeting is that the Council of Ministers desire to forestall any attempt to divide the railways into zones or districts, thus dividing the management of the railway among groups interested powers. Somehow the Government here has the feeling that this railway project is being decided, possibly at the present moment, without taking into consideration the wishes of the people here. Both the Government and all foreign representatives here are entirely ignorant of what is going on in the cabinet of the Allied Powers concerning the Siberian Railway.
The project referred to by Council of Ministers is the one agreed upon by [omission] and Stevens last October36 and which the Japanese evidently refused to agree to.
Present at the meeting of the Council of Ministers, by special invitation, on evening 13th, were Regnault,37 Eliot, Generals Janin, Knox, a Japanese officer, Schuyler38 and myself. Harris.”
- See Foreign Relations, 1918, Russia, vol. iii, p. 275.↩
- Eugène L. G. Regnault, French High Commissioner in Siberia.↩
- Capt. Montgomery Schuyler, U.S.A., on duty at Omsk.↩