861.77/2052a
The Secretary of State to the British Ambassador (Geddes)
My Dear Mr. Ambassador: Adverting to our conversation of today in reference to the practical necessity for a modification and strengthening of the existing agreement for the international control of the operation of the Chinese Eastern Railway, I am sending you herewith, for your consideration, a copy of the memorandum85 on this subject which was made a basis of a conversation with you in January last by Mr. Norman H. Davis, then Acting Secretary of State.
In communicating to you these suggestions for the improvement of the present system of international control of the operation of the railway, I would bespeak your sympathetic and careful consideration, and have to assure you that I would welcome any such comments or suggestions as would in your opinion facilitate a full and frank understanding between our two Governments as to the course to be pursued by them in reference to the somewhat critical situation in which the Chinese Eastern Railway is now placed.
In this connection, I am also forwarding as of possible convenience to you in your consideration of this question a print on the subject of the assistance given in the operation of the Trans-Siberian Railway system,86 containing (on Page 3) the original plan for the supervision of the Chinese Eastern and Trans-Siberian Railways,87 together with the appended memorandum agreed upon between the American Ambassador at Tokyo and the Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs, on January 9, 1919.88
I am [etc.]
- Memorandum by the Department, Jan. 13, p. 564.↩
- Not printed.↩
- See Foreign Relations, 1918, Russia, vol. iii, p. 301.↩
- See telegram of Jan. 9, 1919, from the Ambassador in Japan, ibid., 1919, vol. i, p. 590.↩