811.71261/15: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Standley)
364. Post Office Department states that no regular mails to the U.S.S.R. have been dispatched from New York since February 26, 1943 due to difficulties with the route used. Please inquire of appropriate Soviet authorities as to possibility of shipping mails via Pacific route from the United States to Vladivostok, including the mails to be sent onward to Moscow, such shipments to be made on vessels registered under the Soviet flag prior to entry of United States into the war.53 Post Office Department also states mails are not heavy. Only some 400 bags, the accumulation of past 2 months, are now awaiting dispatching.
In Department’s estimation it seems highly desirable to maintain satisfactory mail connections between the United States and the U.S.S.R. and you are requested to take the matter up immediately with the Soviet authorities, and to press as strongly as you may deem advisable for an early solution of the problem. It is imperative that definite assurances be obtained that such mails will not be subject to seizure, tampering, etc. by the Japanese.
Please telegraph result of your representations.
If result is not satisfactory please give your opinion regarding the advisability of using the Persian Gulf route.
[Mr. Davies reported in telegram No. 539, May 27, 1943, from Moscow that Premier Stalin had handed him at the Kremlin the reply to President Roosevelt’s letter of May 5, 1943, to be delivered personally to the President. For texts of Roosevelt’s letter and Stalin’s reply, see Foreign Relations, The Conferences at Cairo and Tehran, 1943, pages 3 and 6, respectively.]
- The Navy Department had observed that recently more of the old registered ships of the Soviet Union were being put on the Pacific route, apparently because “there is less danger of the Japanese seizing the old registered Russian ships than there is in their seizing the ships which we have furnished to Russia.” (811.71261/15)↩