125.351/11–348: Telegram
The Ambassador in China (Stuart) to the Secretary of State
[Received November 3—8:42 a. m.]
2073. We believe recent Communist victories in Manchuria have highlighted present value and considerably increased potential value of our Consulate in Dairen. In final paragraph of his telegram October 1, sent Nanking 62, repeated Department 160, Paddock urged that Dairen Consulate not be closed simply because of delay in reestablishing courier service. We are inclined to reconsider our recommendation made in penultimate paragraph Embtel 1607, August 31 that Dairen Consulate be closed with full publicity if Soviets after a month still refuse to agree to our re-establishment of a courier service and now to recommend further and more emphatic approach to Foreign Office in Moscow to permit us to service Dairen.
More than month has now passed since Moscow Embassy on September 30th first sent letter to Soviet Foreign Office requesting prompt approval of proposed re-establishment of courier service and, as far as we have learned, Soviet Foreign Office has not yet shown courtesy of reply. This inaction clearly portends Soviet intention to allow our Dairen Consulate simply to die on the vine through lack of courier service bringing in currency, codes and vital supplies. We believe the longer this Soviet inaction continues, the more set it will become.
More emphatic representations Moscow might consist of flat statement to Soviets that, if they continue to obstruct our legitimate courier service to Dairen, we shall have no recourse but to reconsider the policy of cooperation which we have always followed in assisting Soviet courier services out of Washington to such lateral points as Ottawa, Mexico City, Havana, and even Australia. We believe it very probable that Soviets would quickly realize danger of jeopardizing their lateral courier runs under our control which are certainly more important to them than ours to us. Furthermore, given Soviet custom of making their reprisals in kind, we think there is little danger that Soviets would try to retaliate to this display of force in some other unrelated fields (which have already been quite well covered anyway).
[Page 799]Unless we are prepared to force this issue to logical and justifiable conclusion, we hold as academic question raised in Paddock’s despatch No. 31, July 25 to Embassy (copy to Department22) concerning his recommendations about periodic assignments of Russian and Chinese speaking FSOS to Dairen and Moscow’s and Peiping’s approval thereof (see Moscow airgram 892, September 13 to Department22) and Peiping despatch No. 69, August 21, sent Nanking with copy to Department.22