Your telegram No. 52. [1]

Have checked report. So far as is known here it has no foundation.

Far Eastern Department consider it highly improbable, for the
following reasons:

(1) Japanese unlikely to admit any Russian claim to interfere in
Netherlands East Indies.

(2) There would be no need for Germans to go to Peking to discuss
the situation with Japanese. They could of course do this in
Tokyo. According to Japanese Foreign Office spokesman the German
Ambassador at Tokyo [2] informed the Japanese Government that
'Germany does not intend any intervention in the question of the
Netherlands East Indies'. They have thus given the Japanese a
'free hand'.

This time all information here is to the effect that Japanese are
proceeding according to a policy of their own regarding the
Netherlands East Indies, i.e., by way of demands of an economic
character (telegrams Nos. 338 [3] and 348 [4]).

STIRLING