Mr. Blaine to Mr. Phelps.
Washington, May 19, 1891.
Sir: I have received your No. 434, of the 29th ultimo, further relating to the passport No. 1202 issued October 10, 1891, by your legation, to Alexander Block. The correspondence inclosed with your dispatch answers the object the Department had in view in writing its instruction No. 404.
It appears that the father, who is understood to have died in the United States in 1881, abandoned his family in 1879, and that the friends of young Block’s mother brought her and her son to Germany in 1880; that she died in 1882, and that about 1889 the son was apprenticed by one Julius Heilbronner, a leading leather merchant of Nuremberg, Bavaria; that in consequence of the decision of the royal district government application was made to you for a passport in the youth’s behalf. “The passport, after some hesitation,” you say to Consul Black, “is issued upon the ground that Block, who was born in the United States, is not personally responsible for his coming to this country (Germany) as a young child, and upon the supposition that he will definitely return to the United States on or before the attainment of his majority.”
Your caution appears a wise one that he should return to the United States before attaining the age of 21 years.
While the granting of a passport is, under the circumstances, approved, it is well to say frankly that should a claim be made by the German authorities for military duty, the case of this young man, who has not been in the United States since 1880, knows absolutely nothing about his father, comparatively little about himself, and does not even speak the English language, affords doubtful grounds for hopeful appeal in his behalf.
I am, etc.,