761.9411/73: Telegram
The Ambassador in China (Johnson) to the Secretary of State
[Received April 5—6:50 a.m.]
127. The Foreign Minister40 informed me yesterday that he had received a “reliable but unconfirmed” report from Moscow to the effect that when Matsuoka was recently received by Stalin and Molotov he approached the latter and suggested the continuation of negotiations said to have been initiated during the incumbency of Litvinov as Soviet Foreign Minister for the conclusion of a nonaggression pact between Japan and the Soviet Union; and that Matsuoka was informed in reply that while it is the policy of the Soviet Union to negotiate nonaggression pacts with its neighbors in the case of Japan it would be necessary to bring about a restoration of the status quo ante of the Portsmouth Treaty41 before the Soviet Union would consider the conclusion of such a pact with Japan. The Foreign Minister, who seemed to think that the report had some basis in fact, expressed the view that the Russian counterproposal was tantamount to a “polite refusal” of Matsuoka’s proposal.
Sent to the Department, repeated to Peking.
- Wang Chung-hui.↩
- Signed September 5, 1905, Foreign Relations, 1905, p. 824.↩