Office of the Historian

File No. 861.00/2980

The Consul at Moscow ( Poole) to the Secretary of State

Moscow, September 4, 1918.
[Received October 16.]

Sir: I have the honor to report that under date of September 4, I sent a personal note to the Commissar for Foreign Affairs through the Minister of the Netherlands, who was in Moscow at the time negotiating on behalf of the neutrals respecting the several questions [Page 683] which had arisen between the Entente powers and the Bolshevik government. A copy is enclosed.

I also enclose copies of the telegrams which accompanied the note to the Commissar.1 The Department will observe that in No. 2 the last three sentences of the text as sent to the Department were suppressed. The reason is obvious. In the copy of this telegram furnished to the Commissar the next to the last sentence of the third [fourth] paragraph was also altered, reading: “An irresponsible government is venting its desperation in the daily massacre of untold innocents.”

This step was taken with the approval of my Allied colleagues and the Minister of the Netherlands. I felt that it was a desperate situation justifying any measure which might conceivably restrain the Bolsheviki in their lawless and inhuman career.

In connection with telegram No. 1, I invite the Department’s attention to the enclosed excerpt from the report of the Commissar for Foreign Affairs before the meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on September 2.2

I have [etc.]

DeWitt C. Poole, Jr.
[Enclosure]

The American Consul at Moscow ( Poole) to the Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs ( Chicherin)

Moscow, September 4, 1918.

Dear Mr. Chicherin: As I have never failed to deal with you frankly, I am sending you herewith copies of two messages already dispatched to Washington, where they will arrive in a few days.

It is impossible for me to believe that you approve of the mad career into which the Bolshevik government has now plunged. Your cause totters on the verge of complete moral bankruptcy. There is only one possible means of redemption. Words and discussions and counter accusations will no longer avail. You must stop at once the barbarous oppression of your own people.

The enclosed messages will give you and your colleagues some foretaste, I hope, of what the judgment of the world will be when the truth is known. When your government shows not by words but by unmistakable acts that they have returned to the ways of civilization, I shall be most happy to report thereon fully and sympathetically.

Sincerely,

DeWitt C. Poole, Jr.
  1. No. 1, ante, p. 662; No. 2, ante, p. 681.↩
  2. See enclosure to despatch of Sept. 5, ante, p. 581.↩