744     THE PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE, 1919, VOLUME V
Following telegram 10 was received by wireless through Swedish
station to Mr. Fridtjof Nansen:
"Sir: Your very kind message of April 17thloa containing your
exchange of letters with the Council of Four reached us only on
May 4 by way of the Nas Wireless Station and was at once given to
the People's Commissariat of Social Welfare for thorough ex-
amination. Wish in the name of the Russian Soviet Government
to convey to you our heartiest thanks for the warm interest you
manifest in the well-being of the Russian people. Great are indeed
the suffering and privations inflicted upon the Russian people by the
inhuman blockade of the Associated and so-called Neutral Powers
and by the incessant wars forced upon it against its will. If left in
peace and allowed free development Soviet Russia would soon be
able to restore. her national production, to regain her economic
strength, to provide for her own needs and to be helpful to other
countries. But in the present situation in which she has been put by
the implacable policy of the Associated Powers help in foodstuffs
from abroad would be most welcome to Russia, and the Russian
Soviet Government appreciates most thankfully your human[e]
and heartfelt response to her sufferings, and considering the univer-
sal respect surrounding your person will be especially glad to enter
into communication with you for the realisation of your schemes of
help which you emphasise as being purely humanitarian. On this
basis of humanitarian work or help to suffering people we would be
disposed to do everything in our power to further the realisation of
your project. Unfortunately your benevolent intentions which you
indicate yourself as being based upon purely humanitarian grounds
and which according to your letter must be realised by a commission
of fully non-political character have been mixed up by others with
political purposes. In the letter addressed to you by the Four Powers
your scheme is represented as involving cessation of hostilities and
of transfer of troops and war material. We regret very much that
your original intentions have thus been fundamentally disfigured by
the governmentEs] of the Associated Powers. We need not explain
to you that military operationEs] which obviously have in view to
change external or internal conditions of the involved countries
belong wholly to the domain of politics and that likewise cessation
of hostilities which means preventing the belligerent who has every
reason to expect successes from obtaining them is also a purely
political act. Thus your sincerely charitable intentions have been
misused by others in order to cover such purposes which are obviously
political with the semblance of an action originally humanitarian
only. Being ready to lend every assistance to your scheme so far
as it bears the character you have ascribed to it in your letter we
at the same time do not wish to be the objects of foul play, and
knowing that you like ourselves mean business and wish really to
attain the proposed, we would like to ask whether this incantation
[interimixeture?] of heterogeneous purposes has been finally adopted
by yourself. We expect that we will be able to make it clear to you
that in order to realise our [your?] intentions this interpretation
"The Russian text in Mezhdunarodznaya Politika is dated May 7.
ba Quoted in telegram No. 284, May 9, 1919, from the Ambassador in France,
Foreign Relations, 1919, Russia, p. 111.