Mr. Storer to Mr. Sherman.
Brussels, October 26, 1897. (Received November 6.)
Sir: I have the honor to ask whether the facts I submit to you can make a difference in the opinion of the Department once given in the same case. Mrs. Marie Klugmann obtained a passport from my predecessor, Mr. Ewing, April 1, 1895, which is numbered 45. She applies to this legation, showing the former passport, in view of the letter of the Department on this subject to Mr. Ewing, numbered 150, bearing date of July 15, 1895. I had no alternative but to decline to issue a new passport.
The following facts, however, would seem to appeal with great weight to the discretion of the Department: Mrs. Klugmann was told at the time when she took out her passport, in 1895, that she would always have the right to a renewal of the same on the return of the former one. She was never informed in any way of the view taken of her legal rights by the Department.
Last spring she left her husband and several children in Russia in order to visit her married daughter at Lille, France. On her way there through Brussels she expected to apply for a renewal of her passport, but got the impression some way or other that the minister was not in town, and consequently did not make the application. Her return to Brussels from Lille in order to get a new passport was delayed by the birth of a grandchild, and she has made no application until now, on the eve of her departure to her home and family in Russia.
My inability to issue her a passport falls on her and her family as a great misfortune, as well as an apparent injustice, since she can not cross the Russian frontier without it. She states under oath that it is the intention of her husband and herself to go with their children to the United States in March next, where his sister and her family are now living, and in this statement she is emphatically supported by the affirmation of her son-in-law, a very intelligent French gentleman, [Page 31] engaged in business in Lille and well known in Brussels. They are people of large means in Russia and own property in New York, but whether real or personal Mrs. Klugmann could not inform me.
I am convinced of the truth of the statements made, and the case is one in which it seems to me the Department might without risk make an exception to its general ruling and instruct me to issue the passport. Of course, in the force of the disapproval of the issuing of the first passport, I can take no action except under instructions from you.
I have, etc.,