861.00/4905: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Consul General at Irkutsk (Harris), temporarily at Omsk28
For Morris.
Your July 22, 12 p.m. Department attaches greatest importance to your comments and will be glad if you can clear up definite misapprehensions it has received from reports by Harris, Hadley, Embry, Dr. Teusler, Major Emerson and other returning Americans, especially as to basis and extent of popular support of Kolchak West of Irkutsk. Department has received no report of suppression of [Page 399] attempts at local self government except at Vladivostok and in area controlled by Cossack leaders Semenoff and Kalmikoff.
The Department has had the opinion that Kolchak reverses were result of over-extension and that present weakness is due to Kolchak supporters having placed almost entire emphasis on military effort. It would seem that no Government in Russia can survive except by demonstrating its power to give better conditions of general welfare than the Bolsheviki are affording.
These points are suggested in hope that they may serve to assist you in making situation clear to the Department.
- Repeated by the Secretary of State to the Commission to Negotiate Peace in no. 2653, July 26, 4 p.m., with instruction to communicate the substance orally to their British and French colleagues.↩