861.00/5012 b: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Commissioner at Riga (Gade)
You may take any practicable means to convey informally to the Esthonian authorities the suggestion that accession on their part to the reported Bolshevik proposal of free transit through Esthonian territory and use of Esthonian ports would tend to place Esthonia in a position of subserviency to Soviet Russia which might make it worse than dependent. Having regard to Esthonia’s slight territorial extent and feeble economy, it is not to be supposed that if such an arrangement were once established Esthonia would be able successfully to resist an inevitable tendency to encroach further upon its sovereignty. The proposal opens the way in fact for a practical nullification of the independence which the Bolsheviki pretend to be willing to grant to Esthonia.