No. 150.
General Schenck to Mr. Fish.
London, October 7, 1872. (Received October 23.)
Sir: You have doubtless received a copy of the last Austrian “Red Book,” and you will have observed among its contents the correspondence of Count Beust with his government, in which he takes decided ground against the rules expressed in the sixth article of the treaty of Washington. Mr. Delaplaine, our secretary of legation at Vienna, sent me a copy a few days ago, and I have, with my little knowledge of German, made an imperfect translation of these letters. But you will have it better done at the Department.
[Page 302]Count Beust objects that the rules thus declared would narrow the rights of neutrals, and give undue advantage to belligerents. The general adoption of them, he says, would obstruct and even repress maritime progress; and he advises against the acceptance of “any modification of maxims in the law of nations not demanded by the natural development of international rights.”
This hostility to the rules agreed on between the United States and Great Britain it seems will not be confined to Austria. I learned from Lord Granville some time since that the German embassador at this court, Count Bernstoff, had been talking with him about them, and expressing the probable opposition to them of his government when they should come to be proposed for the acceptance of other powers.
Lord Granville, in the same conversation, the subject being adverted to, asked me my opinion as to them, taking up again the consideration of the form of the joint or identic note to be agreed on for bringing the rules to the notice of other governments, and requesting their assent to them. This was after the removal of all difficulties in the way of the arbitration at Geneva, and when the tribunal was advancing toward a decision. I told him I thought you would deem it inexpedient to resume with him your interrupted correspondence on that point just at a time when some award was likely to be made involving an interpretation and application of these rules; and considering that whatever occurred or was decided at Geneva might have some effect on the minds of those to whom they would be presented for acceptance, I said that the other powers would, under these circumstances, naturally wait for the light to be thrown on the question by the judgment of the arbitrators, and nothing would be gained by any antecedent movement. This was his lordship’s own view also of the matter.
The way is open now, I suppose, for taking up the subject again, if you think proper to do so, where it was left off last December.
I have, &c.,