such correspondence, the allied Governments proceed to deprive neutral Governments of the benefits of these assurances by seizing and confiscating mail from vessels in port instead of at sea. They compel neutral ships without just cause to enter their own ports, or they induce shipping lines, through some form of duress, to send their mail ships via British ports, or they detain all vessels merely calling at British ports, thus acquiring by force or unjustifiable means an illegal jurisdiction. Acting upon this enforced jurisdiction the authorities remove all mails, genuine correspondence, as well as post parcels, take them to London, where every piece, even though of neutral origin and destination, is opened and critically examined to determine the "sincerity of their character," in accordance with the interpretation given that undefined phrase by the British and French censors. Finally the expurgated remainder is forwarded, frequently after irreparable delay, to its destination. Ships are detained en route to or from the United States or to or from other neutral countries, and mails are held and delayed for several days and, in some cases for weeks and even months, even though not routed to ports of north Europe via British ports. This has been the procedure which has been practiced since the announcement of February 15, 1916. To some extent the same practice was followed before that date, calling forth the protest of this Government on January 4, 1916. But to that protest the memorandum under acknowledgment makes no reference and is entirely unresponsive. The Government of the United States must again insist with emphasis that the British and French Governments do not obtain rightful jurisdiction of ships by forcing or inducing them to visit their ports for the purpose of seizing their mails, or thereby obtain greater belligerent rights as to such ships than they could exercise on the high seas, for there is, in the opinion of the Government of the United States, no legal distinction between the seizure of mails at sea, which is announced as abandoned, and their seizure from vessels voluntarily or involuntarily in port. The British and French practice amounts to an unwarranted limitation on the use by neutrals of the world's highway for the transmission of correspondence. The practice actually followed by the allied powers must be said to justify the conclusions, therefore, that the announcement of February 15 was merely notice that one illegal practice had been abandoned to make place for the development of another more onerous and vexatious in character. The present practice is a violation not only of the spirit of the announcement of February 15 but of the rule of The Hague Convention, upon which it is concededly based. Aside from this, it is a violation of the prior practice of nations which Great Britain and her allies have in the past assisted to establish and maintain, notwithstanding the statement in the memorandum that "as late as 1907 the letters and dispatches themselves could be seized and confiscated." During the war between the United States and Mexico the United States forces allowed British steamers to enter and depart from the port of Vera Cruz without molesting the mails intended for inland points. During the American Civil War Lord Russell endeavored to induce the United States to concede that "Her Majesty's mails on board a private vessel should be exempted from visitation or detention." This exemption of mails was urged in October, 1862, in the case of British mails on board the Adela. On October 31 Secretary Seward announced that "public mails of any friendly or neutral power duly certified or authenticated as such shall not be searched or opened but be put as speedily as may be convenient on the way to their designated destination." In accordance with this announcement the Government of the United States, in the case of the British steamship Peterhof, which had been seized with her mails against the protest of Her Majesty's Government, had her mails forwarded to destination unopened. The same rule was followed by France, as I am advised in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870; by the United States in the SpanishAmerican War of 1898; by Great Britain in the South African War, in the case of the German mail steamers Bundesrath and General; by Japan and and substantially by Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904. And even in the present war, as the memorandum of Great Britain and France states, their enemy, Germany, has desisted from the practice of interfering with neutral mails, even on board belligerent steamers. This is illustrated in the case of the French steamer Floride, captured by the auxiliary cruiser Prinz Eitel Frederich, cited by the British and French Governments in support of their argument regarding parcel mails. In this case the letter mails of the Floride, amounting to 144 sacks, were forwarded to their destination by the commander at the first opportunity upon arriving in the United States. It would seem, therefore, to be conclusively established that the interference with mails of which this Government justly complains are wrong in principle and in practice. The arbitrary methods employed by the British and French Governments have resulted most disastrously to citizens of the United States. Important papers which can never be duplicated, or can be duplicated only with great difficulty, such as United States patents for inventions, rare documents, legal papers relating to the settlement of estates, powers of attorney, fire insurance claims, incometax returns, and similar matters, have been lost. Delays in receiving shipping documents have caused great loss and inconvenience by preventing prompt delivery of goods. In the case of the MacNiff Horticultural Co., of New York, large shipments of plants and bulbs from Holland were, I am informed, frozen on the wharves because possession could not be obtained in the absence of documents relating to them which had been removed from the New Amsterdam, Oosterdyk, and Rotterdam. Business opportunities are lost by failure to transmit promptly bids, specifications, and contracts. The Standard Underground Cable Co., of Pittsburgh, for example, sent by mail a tender and specifications for certain proposed electrical works to be constructed in Christiania; after several weeks of waiting, the papers having failed to arrive, the American company was told that the bids could not be longer held open and the contract was awarded to a British competitor. Checks, drafts, money orders, securities, and similar property are lost or detailed for weeks and months. Business correspondence relating to legitimate and bona fide trade between neutral countries, correspondence of a personal nature, and also certain official correspondence, such as money-order lists and other matter forwarded by Government departments, are detained, lost, or possibly destroyed. For instance, the Postmaster General informs me that certain international money-order lists from the United States to Germany, Greece, and other countries, and from Germany to the United States, sent through the mails, have not reached their destination, though dispatched several months ago. It was necessary to have some of these lists duplicated and again dispatched by the steamship Frederick VIII, which sailed from New York on April 19, and from which all the mails intended for Germany have been taken and held in British jurisdiction. As a further example of the delay and loss consequent upon the British practice the Postmaster General also sends me a copy of a letter from the British postal administration admitting that the mails were removed from the steamer Medan in the Downs on January 30 last and not forwarded until some time "between the 2d of February and the 2d of March," and that 182 bags of these mails "were lost during transmission to Holland on the 26th day of February by the Dutch steamship Mecklenburg." The Medan arrived safely at Rotterdam a day or two after she left the Downs. Numerous complaints similar to the foregoing have been received by this Government, the details of which are available, but I believe I have cited sufficient facts to show the unprecedented and vexatious nature of the interference with mails persisted in by British and French authorities. Not only are American commercial interests injured, but rights of property are violated, and the rules of international law and custom are palpably disregarded. I can only add that this continuing offense has led to such losses to American citizens and to a possible responsibility of the United States to repair them that this Government will be compelled in the near future to press claims for full reclamation upon the attenttion of His Majesty's Government and that of the French Republic. The principle being plain and definite, and the present practice of the Governments of Great Britain and France being clearly in contravention of the principle, I will state more in detail the position of the Government of the United States in regard to the treatment of certain classes of sealed mails under a strict application of the principle upon which our Governments seem to be in general accord. The Government of the United States is inclined to the opinion that the class of mail matter which includes stocks, bonds, coupons, and similar securities is to be regarded as of the same nature as merchandise or other articles of property and subject to the same exercise of belligerent rights. Money orders, checks, drafts, notes, and other negotiable instruments which may pass as the equivalent of money are, it is considered, also to be classed as merchandise. Correspondence, including shipping documents, money-order lists, and papers of that character, even though relating to "enemy supplies or exports," unless carried on the same ship as the property referred to, are, in the opinion of this Government, to be regarded as "genuine correspondence," and entitled to unmolested passage. The Government of the United States, in view of the improper methods employed by the British and French authorities in interrupting mails passing between the United States and other neutral countries and between the United States and the enemies of Great Britain, can no longer tolerate the wrongs which citizens of the United States have suffered and continue to suffer through these methods. To submit to a lawless practice of this character would open the door to repeated violations of international law by the belligerent powers on the ground of military necessity of which the violator would be the sole judge. Manifestly, a neutral nation can not permit its rights on the high seas to be determined by belligerents or the exercise of those rights to be permitted or denied arbitrarily by the Government of a warring nation. The rights of neutrals are as sacred as the rights of belligerents and must be as strictly observed. The Government of the United States, confident in the regard for international law and the rights or neutrals, which the British and French Governments have so often proclaimed and the disregard of which they have urged so vigorously against their enemies in the present war, expects the present practice of the British and French authorities in the treatment of mails from or to the United States to cease and belligerent rights, as exercised, to conform to the principle governing the passage of mail matter and to the recognized practice of nations. Only a radical change in the present British and French policy, restoring to the United States its full rights as a neutral power, will satisfy this Government. I have, etc., ROBERT LANSING, No. 307] THE BRITISH AMBASSADOR TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE. BRITISH EMBASSY, Washington, October 12, 1916. SIK: In conformity with instructions received from Viscount Grey, of Fallodon, His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, I have the honor to transmit herewith copy of the memorandum (identic memorandum received from the French Embassy), agreed upon by His Majesty's Government and the French Government, embodying the joint reply of the allies to your note of May 24 regarding the examination of the mails. I have, etc., CECIL SPRING RICE. [Inclosure-Translation.] 1. By a letter of May 24 last the Secretary of State of the United States was pleased to give the views of the American Government on the memorandum of the allied Governments concerning mails found on merchant ships on the high seas. 2. The allied Governments have found that their views agreed with those of the Government of the United States in regard to the Postal Union Convention, which is recognized on both sides to be foreign to the questions now under consideration; post parcels respectively recognized as being under the common rule of merchandise subject to the exercise of belligerent rights, as provided by international law; the inspection of private mails to the end of ascertaining whether they do not contain contraband goods, and, if carried on an enemy ship, whether they do not contain enemy property. It is clear that that inspection which necessarily implies the opening of covers so as to verify the contents could not be carried on on board without being attended with great confusion, causing serious delay to the mails, passengers, and cargoes, and without causing for the letters in transit errors, losses, or at least great risk of miscarriage. That is the reason why the allies had mail bags landed and sent to centers provided with the necessary force and equipment for prompt and regular handling. In all this the allied Governments had no other object in view than to limit, as far as possible, the inconvenience that might result for innocent mails and neutral vessels from the legitimate exercise of their belligerent rights in respect to hostile correspondence. 3. The Government of the United States acknowledges it agrees with the allied Governments as to principles, but expresses certain divergent views and certain criticism as to the methods observed by the allies in applying these principles. 4. These divergencies of views and criticisms are as follows: 5. In the first place, according to the Government of the United States, the practice of the allied Governments is said to be contrary to their own declaration, in that, while declaring themselves unwilling to seize and confiscate genuine mails on the high seas, they would obtain the same result by sending, with or without their consent, neutral vessels to allied ports, there to effect the seizures and confiscations above referred to, and thus exercise over those vessels a more extensive belligerent right than that which is theirs on the high seas. According to the Government of the United States, there should be in point of law no distinction to be made between seizure of mails on the high seas, which the allies have declared they will not apply for the present, and the same seizure practiced on board ships that are, whether willingly or not, in an allied port. 6. On this first point and as regards vessels summoned on the high seas and compelled to make for an allied port, the allied Governments have the honor to advise the Government of the United States that they have never subjected mails to a different treatment according as they were found on a neutral vessel on the high seas or on neutral vessels compelled to proceed to an allied port; they have always acknowledged that visits made in the port after a forced change of course must in this respect be on the same footing as a visit on the high seas, and the criticism formulated by the Government of the United States does not therefore seem warranted. 7. As to ships which of their own accord call at allied ports it is important to point out that in this case they are really "voluntarily " making the call. In calling at an allied port the master acts, not on any order from the allied authorities, but solely carries out the instructions of the owner; neither are those instructions forced upon the said owner. In consideration of certain advantages derived from the call at an allied port, of which he is at full liberty to enjoy or refuse the benefits, the owner instructs his captain to call at this or that port. He does not, in truth, undergo any constraint. In point of law the allied Governments think it a rule generally accepted, particularly in the United States (United States v. Dickelman, United States Supreme Court, 1875; 92 U. S. Rep., 520; Scott's cases, 264), that merchant ships which enter a foreign port thereby place themselves under the laws in force in that port, |