Mr. Cambon to Mr. Hay.
Washington, May 12, 1902.
Mr. Secretary of State: In a series of notes, of which the last bears date February 5 and No. 445, you were good enough to acquaint me with the measures taken and the instructions issued by the Department of State, with a view of causing the Federal authorities and the officials of the States of Oregon and California to observe the Franco-American consular convention in cases giving to the French consular officers occasion to request the arrest and detention of deserters from French merchant sailing vessels.
The assurances which you had been pleased repeatedly to give me had led me to believe that there would be no recurrence of the incidents brought to your attention by the embassy in its notes of November 24 and December 22 (27), 1901.
[Page 403]I am sorry to say that the orders, the issuance of which you announce to me, seem to have failed in impressing upon the authorities the necessity of observing the consular convention of 1853.
Once before Mr. de Margerie had to inform the Department—on December 22 (27) last—that the measures announced in notes Nos. 432, 433, and 434, of December 10, 21, and 24, produced no effect. He called attention on the one hand to fresh instances of disregard of the consular convention by the judicial authorities, and on the other to the actual business of desertion in which the “boarding masters” of the several ports on the Pacific were engaged with the seamen belonging to the crews of the French sailing vessels, without any hindrance whatever on the part of the authorities.
I am again constrained to remark that the assurances repeatedly given me in the notes of January 3, 14, 22, and 28, February 4 and 5, Nos. 439, 440, 441, 443, 444, and 445, have not produced the effect which I had occasion to expect.
The consul-general of France at San Francisco reports two new cases in which the authorities in San Francisco have clearly contravened articles 8 and 9 of the consular convention of 1853.
On the 3d of April last Mr. D’Allemagne requested the chief of police to cause to be put on board a French vessel about to sail for France one Joseph Verne, a seaman of the French ship La Reine Blanche, who had been arrested on the requisition of the consulate, and whom the consul had decided, under the authority conferred upon him by the French law, to send back to France for trial. Instead of replying to the request regularly preferred by the consul of France, the chief of police confined himself to advising him, on the 4th of April, that the man had been released by the judge of the supreme court without a request to that effect from the consulate, as required by article 8 of the consular convention. Mr. D’Allemagne made a second requisition for the man’s arrest as a deserter, and again the seaman was released without a request from the consul.
Still more recently, on the 18th of April, disturbances took place on board the St. Rogatien, and the master of that sailing vessel called upon the local police to arrest four of his men. Three of them were sent to jail. One of them managed to escape. On the following day the consul of France requested the chief of police to hold the three men and to imprison the fourth one. Subsequently deciding to have the offenders tried in France, he requested the same official to have two of them taken on board a French sailing vessel. The police complied with this request, but failed to arrest the fourth delinquent and released the third one on its own authority.
I should be greatly obliged to you, Mr. Secretary of State, if you would kindly regard these recent violations of the consular convention as justifying my complaints, all the more as the authorities had already been instructed to observe the stipulations of the treaty of 1853. I am fain to believe that the Department of State will this time take effective action toward the Federal and State authorities with a view of putting, once for all times, an end to the assumption of the officials in ignoring the consular convention and to the obnoxious practices of the “boarding masters” which are continuously connived at.
Be pleased to accept, etc.,