706.6193/5: Telegram

The Acting Secretary of State to the Minister in China (Schurman)

175. Your telegram No. 258, July 25, noon, presents a very gratifying prospect of settlement which the Department would consider satisfactory. In the light of the Department’s views (as expressed in its telegram No. 144, July 9, 3 p.m.81) that the Protocol Powers would not be warranted in denying or conditioning the transfer of the Russian Legation property to a recognized Soviet representative, this Government would not feel justified in authorizing you to associate yourself with any effort to stipulate conditions precedent to the transfer to Karakhan. The necessities of the case would appear to be satisfactorily met by his communicating as a voluntary expression of his intentions a written statement of the assurances offered in [Page 450] conversation with you, provided that such assurances are (as your telegram leads the Department to hope) sufficiently definite to cover questions of defence, taxation and municipal regulations of the Legation Quarter, not only under present circumstances but also in the event that the Soviet regime abandons Russian rights and interests under the Boxer Protocol as it contemplates doing.

Grew
  1. Not printed.