Office of the Historian

793.94 Advisory Committee/12: Telegram

The Consul at Geneva (Gilbert) to the Secretary of State

Geneva, March 9, 1933—noon.
[Received March 9—8:05 a.m.]

76. Drummond has just circulated a communication from Lit-vinoff,49 dated March 7, declining the invitation to be represented on the Advisory Committee in the Sino-Japanese dispute. The letter goes at some length into the Soviet position vis-à-vis international relations in general and the League action in the Sino-Japanese question in particular. The chief points in the declination to serve on the Committee are as follows:

(a)
Decisions of the League and the report of the Committee of Nineteen are based on the Covenant of the League of Nations, the Nine-Power Treaty and the Pact of Paris. Although the Soviet Union has acceded to the Pact of Paris it is not a party of the two other instruments.
(b)
The Pact of Paris and analogous international agreements only cover part of the announced principles of the Soviet Union respecting international relations which include proposals which it has made in the Disarmament Conference.
(c)
The decisions of the League, although to a certain extent in keeping with these principles, contain certain recommendations which are not entirely compatible therewith.
(d)
The Advisory Committee is to submit its proposals to the Assembly on whose declaration the Soviet Union not being a member of the League can exercise no influence.
(e)
“The Advisory Committee has to help the members of the League of Nations to coordinate their activities among themselves and with the states not members of the League. But the majority of the states which belong or will belong to the Advisory Committee, to be exact 13 out of 22, maintains no relations with the Soviet Union and consequently show hostile dispositions towards it. It would clearly be difficult for a committee thus constituted to cope with this task of coordination as regards the Soviet Union, which is deprived of the possibility of having any contact with the majority of its members and individually with those whose interests are most likely to coincide with its own. It may also be doubted whether the states in this category can really take into account the interests of the Soviet Union which are mentioned in the recommendations of the report”.
(f)
The letter concludes with the following statement: “From the outset of the Sino-Japanese conflict the Soviet Government, wishing as far as lay in its power to prevent a further expansion of the armed conflict which might eventually give rise to a fresh world conflagration, took up an attitude of strict neutrality. In accordance with this attitude the Soviet Union faithful to its policy of peace will always associate itself with any action and any proposal emanating from international bodies or individual governments and aiming at the [Page 228] speediest and most equitable settlement of the conflict and at the consolidation of peace in the Far East”.

Gilbert
  1. Maxim Litvinoff, Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs.↩