Mr. Choate to Mr.
Hay.
London, January 30,
1900.
No. 211.]Sir: I have the honor to report that since my
dispatch of the 26th, No. 237, I have received on Sunday, the 28th, your
cipher cable, and on the 29th, in pursuance of the instructions therein
contained, I have sent to Lord Salisbury a note of which I annex a copy;
but as Parliament sits to-day and his entire attention will be absorbed
by that, I do not expect any answer to it, certainly before to-morrow. I
had noticed the discrepancy, referred to in your cable, between Lord
Salisbury’s note on contraband and the action reported by Sir Alfred
Milner in the case of the Beatrice, but I had
understood Lord Salisbury, in an interview on the 24th, to say that the
flour on the Beatrice, which was detained, was
reported as belonging to the Transvaal Government—as I wrote to you in
my dispatch No. 237—and you will observe that I have called his
attention to this in my note of yesterday.
[Page 578]
Seeing a cable from Cape Town in yesterday’s London Times to the effect
that the prize court was to take up the Mashona
case that day, and being solicitous that the American owners of cargo
there should leave no stone unturned, I sent you a cipher cable the same
morning. Of course, a judgment of the prize court against the captors
would be nominal, but Her Majesty’s Government could hardly question it,
and I do not see exactly where else the proof of damages could be made
so well.
I am yet without an answer to my offer to sell the Pennsylvania Milling
Company’s flour by all those vessels to the Government, nor have I any
means of ascertaining whether the cargo detained on the Beatrice was part of that company’s shipment.
I have, etc.
[Inclosure in No. 241.]
Mr. Choate to
Lord Salisbury.
London, January 29,
1900.
My Lord: I have the honor to acknowledge
the receipt of your lordship’s note of the 26th instant, conveying
the substance of a cable received from the high commissioner for
South Africa, dated the 23d instant.
That cable states that the Beatrice contained
large “quantities of goods, principally flour, destined for the
South African Republic” and again speaks of them as “destined for
the enemy’s territory,” and adds that “as the cargo was towed in
such a manner as to make it impossible to land the goods destined
for the South African Republic” without also discharging goods
“intended for Portuguese East Africa,” the whole was landed at East
London, and removal “permitted for the purpose of local and bona
fide Portuguese consumption,” implying that the flour destined for
the South African Republic was detained.
As this indicates a stoppage and detention not as supplies for the
enemy’s forces, but only for the territory of the South African
Republic, is it not in contravention of the rule declared as the
decision of Her Majesty’s Government in your lordship’s note to me
of the 10th instant, wherein you said:
Our view is that food stuffs with a hostile destination can
be considered contraband of war only if they are supplies
for the enemy’s forces. It is not sufficient that they are
capable of being so used—it must be shown that this was in
fact their destination at the time of the seizure.
Should not these goods, therefore, be immediately released, unless
you have evidence that “the supply of the enemy’s forces” was in
fact their destination at the time of the seizure?
My Government, to whom I cabled the contents of your note of the
26th, has instructed me to call your lordship’s attention to this
discrepancy, and to say that the action taken seems to imply an
embargo on the sale and delivery of noncontraband goods in ordinary
course of trade with the people of the republics of South Africa,
and to be inconsistent with the rule as to contraband laid down in
your note of the 10th, and also inadmissible from my Government’s
point of view.
As the action taken by the customs authorities at East London was
taken a month or more before the making and promulgation of your
[Page 579]
rule as to contraband, I
assume that it was upon some other theory, which you have
overruled.
I understood your lordship to say in our conversation of the 24th
that the flour detained at East London was property belonging to the
Government of the South African Republic; but the cable of Sir
Alfred Milner, recited in your note, does not confirm that idea and
leaves me in doubt whether I may not have misunderstood you.
I have, etc.,
