861.77/1136: Telegram
The Ambassador in Japan (Morris) to the Secretary of State
[Received October 14, 3:45 p.m.]
I today handed personally to the Minister for Foreign Affairs the note transmitted in your October 10, 5 p.m. He stated that he was engaged in the preparation of an answer which he hoped to have ready in a week or ten days and which should be a frank statement of the Japanese position. He said that he had arranged for an early conference with General Takayanagi who had just returned from Siberia.
I emphasized again the necessity of a complete understanding between our Governments on the question of the guarding of the railway and the relation of Semenoff to it. I told him the Russian Ambassador had only this morning informed me that Semenoff had recently moved on the Chinese Eastern Railway and that the Council of Ministers at Omsk had ordered their immediate removal but that my Russian colleague had not heard whether Semenoff had obeyed the order.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs expressed great surprise at this information and I believe that he was entirely ignorant of the recent developments reported by Stevens and Graves. I thought it wise for the present to make no further reference to the matter.