761.94/1032: Telegram
The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Davies) to the Secretary of State
[Received April 5—9:15 a.m.]
94. A Tass communiqué published in today’s Pravda states that the Japanese Ambassador protested yesterday to Litvinov11 against evidence of Soviet planes and pilots fighting for the Chinese, saying that on account of the peculiar structure of the Soviet Government special responsibility lay upon it.
Litvinov rejected the protest; said that his Government had sent no military forces or individuals to take part in the war; that other foreign volunteers are serving with Chinese forces and that “the numerous military groups from certain countries (fighting for China) were not only not considered an unfriendly act by the Japanese Government but did not even prevent it from establishing with these countries the closest treaty relations”.
The communiqué further brought out the fact that the Soviet Union a few days ago proposed to the Japanese Government a general settlement of many concrete incidents which have arisen between the two Governments, including the detention of the Soviet mail plane and of two Soviet schooners by the Japanese authorities, the failure to make payments for the Chinese Eastern Railway and Japanese claims regarding alleged oppression of Japanese citizens in the Soviet Union.
A new incident between the two countries indignantly publicised in the Moscow press of April 3 was the alleged endeavor of the Japanese Chargé d’Affaires at Kabul in the course of a “courtesy call” upon a, new Soviet Ambassador to enlist him as a spy in the service of the Japanese.
- Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs.↩