711.61/752: Telegram
The Chargé in the Soviet Union (Thurston) to the Secretary of State
[Received September 14—12:49 p.m.]
1159. The Chinese Ambassador86 called on me yesterday by appointment and stated that he had been specifically directed by his [Page 219] Government to inquire of me as to the present status of Soviet-American relations.87 He then referred to a previous question along the same lines to me and added that as I already knew, it was his personal hope that the relations between the United States and the Soviet Union might be put on as firm and friendly a foundation as possible. I replied that I had no information concerning any new developments in Soviet-American relations nor any indication that any change was imminent. (I presume that the reports of the Soviet Ambassador’s88 recent visits to the State Department had given rise to the instruction to the Chinese Ambassador to make a special inquiry in the premises.)
During the course of the resulting conversation, I asked the Ambassador as to the present status of Soviet-Chinese relations, with particular reference to Soviet assistance to the Chungking Government. The Ambassador replied that there had been no marked change in the Soviet attitude toward his Government but that recently he had not been successful in obtaining a favorable reply to several specific requests for aid, which however, he attributed not to any change in the policy of the Soviet Government but to difficulties of transportation between China and the Soviet [Union] and Soviet military and domestic industrial requirements.
In reply to my inquiry regarding Soviet-Japanese relations, the Ambassador said that although information in the premises was difficult to obtain, he had no reason to suspect that any change had occurred or was likely to occur in Soviet policy toward Japan and that he had been assured specifically by Molotov that the recent Chita conversations are exactly what they appeared to be, namely, a local settlement of local boundary and related questions.
In respect of the Ambassador’s statement that the failure to obtain certain types of material assistance from the Soviet Union was due to physical reasons primarily, it may be mentioned that there is no reason to believe that the transportation problems involved are any greater than in previous years when, according to the information received in the strictest confidence from the Chinese Embassy here (see Embassy’s 592, September 22, 6 p.m.89) the material assistance from the Soviet Union to China was on a very large scale.