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[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Governmen810
CHINA RAILWAYS.
CONFIDENTIAL.
RECE
Rec 18 THB 10
[January 14.]
SECTION 2,
No. 1.
Sir A. Nicolson to Sir Edward Grey.-(Received January 14.)
[1596]
(No. 15.)
(Telegraphic.) P.
FOLLOWING is confidential:
Railway schemes in Manchuria.
St. Petersburgh, January 14, 1910.
At to-day's New Year reception I spoke to M. Isvolsky, who told me in coufidence that he expected to send in shortly his reply to the proposals of the United States Government. The question had formed the subject of a confidential exchange of views between the Russian and Japanese Governments.
The Russian reply, I gather, will be in substance a refusal to entertain the larger scheme of internationalisation, and a request that they may be supplied with some further details as to the Chinchow-Aigun scheme. This latter scheme, M. Isvolsky said, raised questions of great importance to Russia, strategic, commercial, and economic. He repeated once more, as indeed he does on every occasion, that he was at a loss to understand why it was only at the last moment that the opinion of Russia had been asked, while he knew that the question had been mentioned by His Majesty's Government to Japan at an earlier stage. I assured him that this was not intentional, and said that it could only have been an oversight. I was rather at a loss as to how to answer him. The tendency of the United States proposals will be to bring Japan and Russia into closer relations.
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