741.61/915: Telegram
The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Steinhardt) to the Secretary of State
[Received 6:13 p.m.]
1737. The British Ambassador told me today that he has not seen any of the officials of the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs “for nearly a month”; that he has adopted a policy of “aloofness” and that the British Government is now “shutting down” on Soviet imports.46 He expects that as a result of this policy the Soviet Government will within a reasonable period of time approach him on the subject of the resumption of trade negotiations. He said he had finally become convinced that the Soviet authorities are more amenable to retaliatory action than to the customary diplomatic methods.
- The Chargé in London, Herschel V. Johnson, had reported in his telegram No. 3993, December 7, 11 p.m., that during an interview on December 5, with Lord Halifax, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, “he expressed some encouragement at the development of British relations with Russia and, said he, they were not going too badly and that the sum of all their reports indicates Hitler got little if anything out of the visit of Molotov to Berlin.” (740.0011 European War 1939/7044)↩