761.9411/132: Telegram
The Ambassador in China (Johnson) to the Secretary of State
[Received 4:25 p.m.]
174. My 137, April 16, 10 a.m. Last evening while visiting the Foreign Minister I inquired whether the Chinese Government had received any assurances from the Soviet Government in connection with its inquiry regarding the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact signed at Moscow. Doctor Wang stated that Molotov87 had assured the Chinese Ambassador at Moscow that throughout the discussions nothing was said or considered relating to China and that the policy of the Soviet Government toward China would be unchanged as long as China continued its resistance to Japan. Similar assurances had been received from Soviet Ambassador here. He said that Molotov stated that ever since the arrival of the Japanese Ambassador in Moscow last summer the Japanese had been seeking a nonaggression pact similar to the one signed by the Soviet Government with Germany in 1939, that the Soviet Government had refused to sign such a pact but had finally consented to sign with the Japanese a neutrality pact similar to neutrality pact signed between the Soviet Government and the German Government in 1926.88
I inquired whether the Chinese Government had any confirmation of the reports that traffic over the Trans-Siberian Railway by passengers had been stopped. He stated that there was no truth in these reports and cited the fact that the British Legation personnel from Hungary had traveled over without difficulty and reports from Chinese consular officers and Chinese travelers to the same effect. He said that there had been two troop trains reported as moving west on the railway but that these had not proceeded as far as European Russia. His comment was that reports were evidently of Japanese origin to give emphasis to their new pact with Russia. He stated that it was his information that the Japanese at first enthusiastic about the Matsuoka pact had upon further thought grown cool on the subject. It was his own view that the pact was a triumph by Molotov as it separated Japan from the Axis.
[Page 971]Sent to the Department. Repeated to Peiping. Peiping please repeat to Tokyo. Code text by air mail to Moscow.
- Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs, was succeeded as Chairman of the Council of Commissars of the Soviet Union (Premier) on May 6 by Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin, who continued also as Secretary General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.↩
- Signed at Berlin, April 24, 1926, League of Nations Treaty Series, Vol. liii, p. 387.↩