Japan is continuing to exert every effort to co-operate. It is entirely superfluous to declare that Japan will continue with loyalty to support her Allies with every means of assistance materially possible. This would merely be honorably carrying out the duties and the obligations of loyalty toward our Allies.

Gentlemen, the responsibility for maintenance of the security of the Far East lies entirely with Japan. It is proper that we should not hesitate at a moment's notice to take necessary steps in the event that our security should be menaced. I will add that in order to assure lasting peace in the future we are firmly convinced that Japan must not recoil from any sacrifice she may be called upon to make.

III. IMMIGRATION AND THE "GENTLEMEN'S AGREEMENT."

Section I of the act to regulate the immigration of aliens into the United States, approved February 20, 1907, contained the following:

Provided further, That whenever the President shall be satisfied that passports issued by any foreign government to its citizens to go to any country other than the United States or to any insular possession of the United States or to the Canal Zone are being used for the purpose of enabling the holders to come to the continental territory of the United States to the detriment of labor conditions therein, the President may refuse to permit such citizens of the country issuing such passports to enter the continental territory of the United States from such other country or from such insular possessions or from the Canal Zone.

In accordance with this provision and, it is understood, after negotiations with the Japanese Government, the President on March 14, 1907, issued an executive order which cited the above proviso and continued:

And Whereas, upon sufficient evidence produced before me by the Department of Commerce and Labor, I am satisfied that passports issued by the Government of Japan to citizens of that country or Korea and who are laborers, skilled or unskilled, to go to Mexico, to Canada and to Hawaii, are being used for the purpose of enabling the holders thereof to come to the continental territory of the United States to the detriment of labor conditions therein;

DECLARATION ON IMMIGRATION

449

I hereby order that such citizens of Japan or Korea, to wit: Japanese or Korean laborers, skilled and unskilled, who have received passports to go to Mexico, Canada or Hawaii, and come therefrom, be refused permission to enter the continental territory of the United States.

It is further ordered that the secretary of commerce and labor be, and he hereby is, directed to take, through the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization, such measures and to make and enforce such rules and regulations as may be necessary to carry this order into effect.

The treaty of commerce and navigation signed between Japan and the United States at Washington, February 21, 1911, was proclaimed by the United States April 5, 1911, with the following included in the proclamation:

And whereas, the advice and consent of the Senate of the United States to the ratification of the said treaty was given with the understanding "that the treaty shall not be deemed to repeal or affect any of the provisions of the act of Congress entitled 'An Act to Regulate the Immigration of Aliens into the United States,' approved February 20, 1907": And whereas, the said understanding has been accepted by the Government of Japan;

And whereas, the said treaty, as amended by the Senate of the United States, has been duly ratified on both parts, and the ratifications of the two Governments were exchanged in the City of Tokyo, on the fourth day of April, one thousand nine hundred and eleven;

Now, therefore, be it known that I, William Howard Taft, President of the United States of America, have caused the said treaty, as amended, and the said understanding to be made public. . . .

The Japanese ambassador made the following declaration on February 21, 1911, which is considered as an integral part of the treaty:

In proceeding this day to the signature of the treaty of commerce and navigation between Japan and the United States the undersigned, Japanese ambassador in Washington, duly authorized by his Government, has the honor to declare that the Imperial Japanese Government are fully prepared to maintain with equal effectiveness the limitation and control which they have for the past three years exercised in regulation of the emigration of laborers to the United States.

IV. GERMAN ATTEMPTS TO CREATE AMERICAN-JAPANESE

ENMITY.

1. INSTRUCTIONS FROM THE IMPERIAL GERMAN SECRETARY FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS TO THE GERMAN MINISTER TO MEXICO.1

BERLIN, January 19, 1917.

On the 1st of February we intend to begin submarine warfare unrestricted. In spite of this, it is our intention to endeavor to keep neutral the United States of America.

If this attempt is not successful, we propose an alliance on the following basis with Mexico: That we shall make war together and together make peace. We shall give general financial support, and it is understood that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in New Mexico, Texas and Arizona. The details are left to you for settlement.

You are instructed to inform the President of Mexico of the above in the greatest confidence as soon as it is certain that there will be an outbreak of war with the United States, and suggest that the President of Mexico, on his own initiative, should communicate with Japan suggesting adherence at once to this plan. At the same time, offer to mediate between Germany and Japan.

Please call to the attention of the President of Mexico that the employment of ruthless submarine warfare now promises to compel England to make peace in a few months.

ZIMMERMANN.

2. GERMAN STATEMENT ON THE NOTE, MARCH 3, 1917.2 Foreign Secretary Zimmermann was asked by a staff member of the Overseas News Agency about the English report that "a German plot had been revealed to get Mexico to declare war against the United States In response to a resolution adopted by the United States Senate on March 1, 1917, the President transmitted a letter from the secretary of state in which Mr. Lansing stated "that the Government is in possession of evidence which establishes the fact that the note referred to is authentic, and that it is in possession of the Government of the United States, and that the evidence was procured by this Government during the present week."

The Munich Nachrichten, according to an Amsterdam dispatch of October 17, 1918, stated that Professor Moritz J. Bonn, director of the Commercial High School, had disclosed that Legation Counselor Chemitz was the originator of the dispatch.

"Von Chemitz imagined himself an authority on Latin American affairs, and suggested the scheme to Dr. Albert Zimmermann, then German secretary for foreign affairs. Zimmermann discussed it with other foreign office officials, but they thought it unfeasible.

"Zimmermann kept the matter in mind. Presently von Chemitz came and told him that in the next few days an especially reliable messenger would start for Mexico, to whom the message could safely be intrusted, and that it was a matter of now or never.

Zimmermann allowed himself to be over-persuaded, and so the fatal step was taken." • Overseas News Agency (official German news bureau) wireless dispatch, March 3, 1917.

GERMANY ALLEGED A "PLOT"

45I and to secure Japan's aid against the United States." Secretary Zimmermann answered:

"You understand that it is impossible for me to discuss the facts of this 'revealed plot' just at this moment and under these circumstances. I therefore may be allowed to limit my answer to what is said in the English reports, which certainly are not inspired by sympathy with Germany. The English report expressly states that Germany expected and wished to remain on terms of friendship with the United States, but that we had prepared measures of defense in case the United States declared war against Germany. I fail to see how such a 'plot' is inspired by unfriendliness on our part. It would mean nothing but that we would use means universally admitted in war, in case the United States declared war.

"The most important part of the alleged plot is its conditional form. The whole 'plot' falls flat to the ground in case the United States does not declare war against us. And if we really, as the report alleges, considered the possibility of hostile acts of the United States against us, then we really had reasons to do so.

"An Argentine newspaper a short while ago really 'revealed a plot' when it told that the United States last year suggested to other American republics common action against Germany and her allies. This 'plot' apparently was not conditional in the least. The news as published by La Prensa1 (Buenos Aires) agrees well with the interpretation given, for instance, by an American newspaper man, Edward Price Bell, in Berlin and London, who said that the United States was waiting only for the

The facts distorted by the German official at this point in his interview were connected with open efforts made soon after the outbreak of the war to protect the rights of neutral commerce in the Western Hemisphere. After the sinking of the American sailing ship Frye, when German raiders and a German war fleet were particularly active on both sides of South America, some of the diplomatic representatives in Washington of the Latin American countries conceived the idea of joint action to prevent the theater of war from extending into American waters.

The Governing Board of the Pan American Union appointed a special commission on December 8, 1914, to consider certain propositions advanced by individual members to protect the commerce of the Americas. The essential feature of the proposal became the declaration of a zone about 200 miles wide along the American coast from Cape Horn to Canada, within which no belligerent warships or submarines should be permitted to interfere with merchant ships. This subject was discussed in various phases for many months in a desultory way at occasional meetings, but as no substantial encouragement was received from the Department of State no attempt was made to make any report.

Later, on the announcement of the German purpose to prosecute ruthless submarine warfare, some of the Argentine papers made known the fact that Ambassador Naon had proposed joint action by some of the American nations to prevent war between the United States and Germany. It was soon declared, however, by the Ambassador himself that he had acted solely on his individual responsibility.

At the Argentine Embassy in Washington nothing was known of Zimmermann's charge. No one there had any knowledge of the so-called news article said by the German foreign minister to have been published recently in La Prensa. Copies of the paper received were said to contain nothing on the subject.

proper moment in order openly to assist the Entente. The same American stated that Americans from the beginning of the war really participated in it by putting the immense resources of the United States at the Entente's disposal, and that Americans had not declared war only because they felt sure that assistance by friendly neutrality would be during that time much more efficient for the Entente than direct participation in the war. Whether this American newspaper man reported the facts exactly we were at a loss to judge in satisfactory fashion, since we were more or less completely cut off from communication with the United States.

"But there were other facts which seemed to confirm this and similar assurances. Everybody knows these facts, and I need not repeat them. The Entente propaganda services have sufficiently heralded all these Entente demonstrations in the United States. And if you link those demonstrations with the actual attitude of the United States, then it is obvious that it was not frivolous on our part to consider what defensive measures we should take in case we were attacked by the United States."

3. IMPERIAL GERMAN SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS TO THE REICHSTAG, MARCH 4, 1917.1 (Extract.)

We were looking out for all of us, in the event of there being the prospect of war with America. It was a natural and justified precaution. I am not sorry that, through its publication in America, it also became known in Japan. For the dispatch of these instructions a secure way was chosen which at present is at Germany's disposal. How the Americans came into possession of the text, which went to America in special secret code, we do not know. That these instructions should have fallen into American hands is a misfortune, but that does not alter the fact that the step was necessary for our patriotic interests. Least of all are they in America justified in being excited about our action. It would be erroneous to suppose that the step made a particularly deep impression abroad. It is regarded as what it is—justifiable defensive action in the event of war.

4. JAPANESE Refutations.

a. STATEMENT OF JAPANESE AMBASSADOR AT WASHINGTON.

WASHINGTON, March 1, 1917.

With regard to the alleged German attempt to induce Japan and Mexico to make war upon the United States, made public in the press Quoted from Reuter dispatch from Amsterdam, March 5, 1917.