870.811/221: Telegram
The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Steinhardt) to the Secretary of State
[Received 10 p.m.]
1482. The publication of the Soviet rejection of the British protest concerning Soviet participation in the new Danube Commission and especially the gratuitous statement contained therein of primary British responsibility for the “injustice” of excluding the Soviet Union from the former Commission is of interest as perhaps reflecting the Soviet attitude toward the British proposals reported in my 1393, October 23, 4 p.m. It is unlikely that were the Soviet Union seriously contemplating the acceptance of these proposals that the British protest concerning the Danube Commission would have been selected as an opportunity to give publicity to an anti-British statement.
I am not clear as to why the British Government chose to protest the Soviet action as a breach of neutrality when a legal question involving treaty rights would appear to have been the ground of protest and it is probable that the introduction of this element of neutrality was particularly distasteful to the Soviet Government by Great Britain.