The Papal Nuncio and representatives of seventeen other powers to Bismarck.
Count: The undersigned, members of the diplomatic corps residing at Paris, had, on the 24th of September last, the honor to transmit to your excellency the expression of their desire that a courier bearing their official dispatches might, each week, on [Page 364] days to be appointed, pass the lines of the besieging army, and go to a locality whence the regular postal service was sure.
By a letter of the 3d of October, the minister of foreign affairs of France has just informed us that he has received from your excellency the reply “that a diplomatic courier could not pass the lines of the besieging troops save on condition that the dispatches be open and treat of no subject, relating to the war.”
We should have considered it our duty, as to the contents of our dispatches, scrupulously to conform to the obligations imposed, during a siege, upon diplomatic agents, by the rules and usages of international law. On the other hand, our position as diplomatic agents, and our duties toward our governments, do not permit us to accept the other condition, only to address open dispatches to them.
If this latter condition were to be adhered to, it would become impossible, to their great regret, for the diplomatic representatives of neutral states to maintain official relations with their respective governments.
Be pleased to accept, Count, the assurances of our very high consideration.