861.48/1021
The Secretary of State to the Chairman of the United States Shipping Board (Payne)
Sir: This Department is in receipt of your letter of November 14, 1919,71 concerning the proposed movement of nine thousand tons of flour to Murmansk, ten thousand tons of coal to the same destination, and a possible shipment of twenty thousand tons of flour to Petrograd. [Page 665] You state that the Financial Attaché of the Russian Embassy, Mr. Ughet, proposes to meet the aggregate freight charges of these shipments, amounting to about $1,750,000, by a series of deferred payments extending over the period to November 1, 1920, with five per cent interest; and further that the Shipping Board is willing to supply this tonnage on receipt of an assurance from the State Department that no future Russian Government will be recognized unless these obligations are assumed by that Government.
You are now informed that it will be the policy of this Department not to recognize any future Russian Government without a recognition by the Government of all its credit obligations assumed on its behalf by the existing unrecognized Russian Governments or their agents.
You may undoubtedly obtain from the United States Grain Corporation the form of obligation accepted by it in making credit sales to the Russian Embassy. It may also interest you to learn that each representative of the Allied and Associated Powers on the Archangel Allied Supply Committee which sold flour and other food stuffs on credit terms in North Russia, took on behalf of his Government an obligation of the Provisional Government of North Russia assuming the debt created by the credit sales, “in its own name and in the name of the future Government of all Russia”.
I have [etc.]
- Not printed.↩