63
WALTER KOUGLER, 32, and wife, born at Posen, Poland, states:-
I am employed as Canton agent of the Soviet Mercantile
Fleet (SOVTOFLOT). My office is in room No. 206, KAN NAM TONG
building, Tai Ping Maloo, Canton. The head office for the Far
East is Sovotoflot, Vladivostock, from which office I receive
my salary. The Executive office is in Moscow. I have been in
Canton for about 10 months. On ✯✯ 15th January, 1927, the Canton
business of the department was handed over to a sub-agent known
as the "New China Shipping Coy" and my job is to supervise the
agency, and in co-operation with the Soviet Consul and the Trade
Mission to transport Soviet goods to China and provide passage
for Soviet officials. My assistant is named Morkovieff, he used
to be godown keeper under the old agency. I have left him in
charge. I arranged the passages of the Russian labour delegates,
there were eight, 7 came to Canton and one went to Macau. Owing
to the attitude of the Canton Government it was not possible to
hold the proposed labour conference and after several postpone-
ments the foreign delegates left for Hankow except the Russians.
The Russians stayed on for a while and then three of them left
for Shanghai on a Chinese ship and the other four went to
Shanghai, for Russia, on the S.S. President Jefferson on 4th
May, 1927, via Hong Kong. I arranged all their passages under
instructions from the head office at Vladivostock but I was not
interested in the political part of the delegation. The foreign
delegation wants to hold the conference at Hankow but the Russian
delegates have no instructions about this and have returned to
Russia. The delegation have no political interest in China and
were only sent by the people of Russia because it is thought
Russia should be in all labour disputes of great interest. I
received a telegram from the Vladivostock Office a few days ago
saying "Report to office at once personally". The wording of
the