Peking, May 29.
Encouraged by the trend. of Soviet negotiations in Japan, the Chinese profess now to be very eager to enter into conference with whatever agent the Bolshevik Government will appoint Although the Russian papers have had a great deal to say about regent terms agreed to by Me. Joffe in Japan, the local English: speaking community is just discovering that the Soviet envoy has come to what is regarded as a particularly weak arrangement which will probably end his negotiations in Japan and which, in the opinion of all Russians, will most certainly end his official career when Moscow comes to appreciate how much he has conceded and how little he has got in exchange.
It was anticipated by all diplomatic folk who observed Mr. Joffe's pilgrimage to Japan with keen interest, that the Soviet would use Japan's urgent need of a renewal of the Kamchatka fishing vights to bargain, for big things. There was some idea that Japan, forced either to renew the lease of the fisheries on the Soviet's terms or to reverse her new Siberian policy and reoccupy the Siberiam ports, might even agree to the return of northern Saghalien. It wae thought that the Soviet would at least hold out for a favourable settlement of the Nikolaievsk affair and possibly for some form of recognition. The fishery rights were certainly Mr. Joffe's trump card and observers are now astonished to discover that it has already been played and wasted on a very small trick. Japan's old agreement was renewed two weeks ago on her own terms and in exchange Mr. Joffe got the right to send cipher telegrams and to establish about a dozen agents in Japan who will vise Russian passports. This is all he got, and now it is about all that he is likely to get.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.