Soviet Settlement

The results of the Russo-Japanese negotiations for the settlement of the Japanese claims in the northern half of the island of Sakhalin and of indemnity for the Nikolaievsk massacre are withheld from the public.

The pourparlers ended without a communique from either participant. That the break is not final was indicated by the fact that M. Kawakami, Japanese negotiator, entertained Adolph A. Joffe, late Soviet Envoy to Peking and representative at the Tokyo Conference, at a farewell dinner given at the Thukiji Hotel.

M. Joffe's ill health, while probably not of the "diplomatic" variety, gives Moscow a graceful opportunity for replacing him by M. Karahan, thus paving the way for necessary concessions to the Japanese point of view and the elimination of the, diplomatically speaking, insignificant obstacles which stand in the way of cooperation between the two strongest Far Eastern Powers, both of which are equally interested in the exploitation, political and economic, of the disjecta membra of China.