No. 67.
His Excellency Terashima
Munenori,
Minister of Foreign
Affairs:
Sir: I have had the honor to receive Your Excellency’s esteemed dispatch of this day’s date, in which you inform me that the inspection of the German steamer “Hesperia” by the medical officer delegated by me can have no influence on the duration of the prescribed term of quarantine.
I suppose from this that I am to understand that Your Excellency, without paying any regard to the opinion of a German expert, intends indiscriminately to detain on the quarantine grounds air German vessels arriving in the bay of Yedo from Kobe or Osaka. I am unable under the existing treaties between Germany and Japan to admit such a right of exclusive disposition of German vessels.
In case Your Excellency really pretends to such a right on behalf of your government, then I feel compelled most formally to protest against it on behalf of the government of the German Empire until I have received the instructions for which I have asked by telegraph.
I am, as I repeatedly have had the honor to assure Your Excellency, perfectly prepared with all my powers to co-operate in the prevention of importation of cholera through German vessels, but it is impossible for me to permit that a German steamer, which in the infected port of departure has had almost no communication with land, and which has a perfectly clean bill of health, be unnecessarily detained.
Nor could I assume the responsibility Of renouncing in matters of quarantine upon the co-operation of a German expert, because, as I have already had the honor to inform your excellency, all the reports which I have hitherto received concerning the enforcement of quarantine at Nagaura., go to show that the quarantine is not effective.
With the assurance of my most distinguished respect,