CO129-575-3 Japanese affairs 2-1-1939 - 21-12-1939 — Page 129

THIS DOCUMENT IS THE PROPERTY OF HIS BRITANNIC MAJESTY'S GOVERNMENT

154

FAR EASTERN (JAPAN).

CONFIDENTIAL.

May 9, 1939.

SECTION 1.

[F 4364/456/23]

(No. 317.)

Copy No. 129

Viscount Halifax to Sir R. Craigie (Tokyo).

Foreign Office, May 9, 1939.

Sir,

I HAD some conversation with the Japanese Ambassador, with whom I dined last night. His Excellency began by telling me that the information I had given him a few days ago as to our Russian conversations being confined to Europe had been timely. He had been able to transmit it to Tokyo and it had not been without influence upon the mind of his Government. The recent comments made by the Tokyo correspondents of The Times and Daily Telegraph had been on the whole, the Ambassador thought, well founded, and there was a movement in Japanese public opinion which exercised a certain influence towards better relations with Great Britain. The Ambassador added that it would not have escaped my notice that Japan was absent from the recent concordat at Milan.

2. The Ambassador then asked me whether I had any deductions to draw from M. Litvinov's retirement. I said that it seemed at present open to every- body to place their own interpretation on this event, but that I noticed in some newspapers a suggestion that it might signify a rapprochement between Russia and Germany. This the Ambassador affected to believe was quite impossible, and said that whenever this sort of suggestion was made it was probably attributable to rumours started from Russian sources with the object of influencing policy. The same thing had happened when Russia wanted France to sign a pact with them, and it was happening now with the same purpose of influencing the policy of Great Britain.

I am, &c.

HALIFAX.

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