Adding that such information as I may receive in the matter will be promptly
communicated to the Department,
[Inclosure in No. 37.]
Mr. Grant to Count
Kalnoky.
Legation of the United States,
Vienna, October 5,
1889.
Your Excellency: I have been instructed by the
Acting Secretary of State to bring to your excellency’s attention the
complaint of Mr. Frank Xavier Fisher, a naturalized citizen of the
United States, in relation to his arrest and imprisonment at Wolfurt,
Austria.
It appears that Mr. Fisher was born at Wolfurt, district of Bregenz,
Austria, on the 9th day of August, 1849; that he resided there until he
was nineteen years of age; that he emigrated to the United States on the
9th of November, 1868, and that in due course of time, and in accordance
with law, he became a naturalized American citizen; that he is now the
bearer of passport No. 8339, issued to him on the 26th day of July,
1889, by the Department of State at Washington; that he left the United
States on the 3d of August, 1889, for Hamburg, and arrived at Wolfurt,
Austria, on the 19th of August, 1889; that on the afternoon of the 21st
of August he was arrested by the municipal gens
d’arme, and asked why he had not presented himself for military
duty at the time fixed for his conscription; that the conscript ion in
question took place after his emigration from Austria, and while he was
in the United State, and that he had no knowledge of the said
conscription until five or
[Page 36]
six
years after it was made; that he informed the officer who arrested him
that he was a citizen of the United States, bearing a formal passport
which he offered to show; that an examination of the passport was
declined, and that he was, without further ceremony, carried off to
prison and there kept, under circumstances of great hardship and
discomfort, until the following morning, when he was brought before the
authorities and his papers examined; that he was then released, with
permission either to leave Wolfurt, or to remain on condition of good
behavior.
It is submitted to your excellency that, upon this statement (as to the
truth of which the complainant has made affidavit) Mr. Fisher was not,
under the convention of the 20th September, 1870, between the United
States and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, liable to trial and punishment,
according to the laws of the Imperial Royal Government of Austro-Hungary
for the non-fulfillment of military duty.
The proceedings of the authorities at Wolfurt seem to my Government to
have been hasty and unwarrantable, and to have been taken without any
examination into the facts of the case. From the well-known sense of
justice and friendship for the United States of the Imperial Royal
Government of Austria-Hungary, it is believed that your excellency will
be ready to admit that care should have been taken to ascertain whether
Mr. Fisher had violated the military laws of this country before
arresting him upon such an assumption, and that his imprisonment under
the circumstances was arbitrary and wholly unjustifiable.
The Acting Secretary of State has accordingly directed me to express the
hope that your excellency will cause the facts in this case to be
thoroughly investigated.
I avail, etc.,
