Mr. Olney to Mr. Peak.
Washington , March 6, 1897 .
Sir: I have to acknowledge the receipt of your dispatches, Nos. 75 and 76, of the 15th and 18th ultimo, both in relation to the claim of the Swiss Government to exact military service from American citizens of Swiss origin temporarily sojourning or being in Switzerland, and having particular reference to the case of Mr. F. A. Schneider, a native-born citizen of the United States, who has been ordered by the military commander of the district of Zurich to report immediately for physical examination and military duty.
The Department can not see without regret the revival of this controversy which has at intervals been so exhaustively argued in the past, and in regard to which the duty of this Government toward its citizens can admit of but one construction on its part.
It may be convenient, in view of the peculiar circumstances of Mr. Schneider’s case, to forego for the present, without prejudice, consideration of the allied questions involved in the cases of persons of Swiss birth becoming naturalized in the United States, without previous renunciation of Swiss citizenship, and returning to Switzerland. As instructions of the Department have heretofore shown, this Government can make no distinction between a native and naturalized citizen in claiming for them the benefits of its treaties with foreign States, although it may be recognized as a fact—regrettable but still a fact—that the circumstances of the acquisition of American citizenship by an alien may leave a conflicting claim to dual allegiance on the part of the Government of the state of his nativity, should he voluntarily return thither.
Mr. F. A. Schneider is, as you have previously reported in your dispatch No. 45, of October 12, 1896, a native-born citizen of the United States, his father at the time of his birth being lawfully invested with the full and complete character of an American citizen by naturalization, after compliance with all the requirements of the United States statutes in that regard. He is not a citizen of the United States by any process of municipal absorption; he is a native-born citizen of citizen parentage. Whatever may be advanced in a contrary sense as respects the dual status of a person acquiring another allegiance without the consent of the State of his origin, this Government can not for an instant admit that such a contention is applicable to the case of a native-born citizen. So far as the knowledge of this Department exists—over more than a century of intercourse with its sovereign [Page 563] equals—no such contention has been maintained by .any other Government, and if suggested has been emphatically denied.
Even upon the careful statements you have recently made concerning the Swiss rule of cantonal citizenship this extraordinary and exceptional doctrine of inherited allegiance appears nowhere distinctly formulated, and if it be put forward as a doctrine it not only finds no color in the received teachings of international law, but it is in itself faulty because apparently unlimited. There seems to be no end to the chain of inherited subjection which must ensue should the Swiss premise be admitted, for if a native-born son of a citizen of the United States can be claimed by Switzerland as a citizen because his father was formerly a Switzer, the grandson and the descendant of the remotest generations may with equal reason, or rather with equal unreasonableness, be claimed as Swiss citizens.
In the correspondence which took place in 1894 in respect to the case of Frederic Tschudy, the present claim in its full extension did not appear, the discussion then being partly as to the imputed dual allegiance of Mr. Tschudy and partly as to the obligation of persons sojourning in Switzerland to pay, under Swiss law, a military tax in default of service, which is a matter regulated by treaty. In Mr. Schneider’s case no theory of dual allegiance can be admitted by this Government, and the offer of the interested party to remove possible contention on the ground of liability to the military tax by tendering payment of the sum, has been rejected. It seems that he is held to service purely and simply on the alleged score of owing paramount allegiance to Switzerland. In this respect Article I of our treaty with Switzerland of November 25, 1850, appears to be distinctly contravened. At the time that treaty was concluded there was no question touching the attitude of the United States in the vital regard of citizenship. It had been sedulously and strenuously maintained for half a century.
The doctrine that a state is competent to admit aliens to its citizenship and to incorporate them in its body politic on a footing indistinguishable from native-born citizens was proclaimed, asserted, and enforced, and has become a recognized principle of public law among nations with the exception of three States—Switzerland being one of them and Russia and Turkey the other two—which hold to the doctrine of perpetual allegiance, only to be dissolved by the consent of the subject’s sovereign. But whatever may be argued as to the dual status of an individual forsaking his native land and embracing the allegiance of another Government, or whatever claim may be made that the treaty between the United States and Switzerland may not specifically apply to those precise cases, there can be no doubt that the United States purposed and that Switzerland assented to the full protection of all native-born citizens of the United States. It is for the benefit of such that our treaties were and are concluded, and for their benefit we must claim their full application. This is not a question of an even counter poise of claim between two conflicting jurisdictions in which each may in practice be supreme to enforce its own law over all affected persons voluntarily resorting to its territories. Any theory of an equally balanced conflict of the laws between the two states is absolutely and necessarily excluded in the case of native-born citizens of either, they being in turn the sons of lawful citizens.
It is proper that you should temperately but distinctly acquaint the Swiss Government with the view here entertained of the present question. Your firm and earnest remonstrance should be interposed in[Page 564]such shape as to leave no doubt in the mind of the Federal Council of the sincerity of our attitude and of our determination to uphold the rights of our native-born citizens, and the council should not be left in ignorance of the severe strain which the claim of indefinitely inherited allegiance so put forth in the case of Mr. Schneider and any person similarly situated may perforce impose upon the traditional and fast friendship which the United States feels for Switzerland.
I am, etc.,