Office of the Historian

811.91261/155: Telegram

The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Steinhardt) to the Secretary of State

Moscow, March 20, 1941—5 p.m.
[Received 6:41 p.m.]

547. My 386, February 27, 10 p.m.12 The Counselor of the British Embassy13 called on Thurston14 today and advised of the intention of the British Embassy to request its Foreign Office to impose upon the Tass15 correspondents in Great Britain substantially the same discriminations and inconveniences to which the British correspondents in Moscow have been subjected including among other things the denial of the use of the long distance telephone other than from the central telephone station, a stricter censorship of their messages as distinguished from those sent by other foreign correspondents, and an intentional delay in the transmission of their despatches commensurate with the delay encountered by the British correspondents in Moscow. He added that it is the intention of Reuter’s16 to cooperate in retaliatory steps against Tass. He expressed the hope that retaliatory steps might be taken concurrently in the United States in the belief that the position of the British and American correspondents in Moscow would be much alleviated by simultaneous action.17

Steinhardt
  1. Not printed.↩
  2. Herbert Lacy Baggallay, Acting Counselor of Embassy.↩
  3. Walter Thurston, Counselor of the American Embassy in the Soviet Union.↩
  4. Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union, official communications organization of the Soviet Government.↩
  5. Reuters, Ltd., British independent news agency.↩
  6. In telegram No. 367, March 26, the Department advised Ambassador Steinhardt that it did not believe “it would be opportune just now” to take the suggested action.↩