File No. 2956/1.
The Acting Secretary of State to Minister Bryan.
Washington, March 30, 1907.
Sir: I have to acknowledge the receipt of your No. 291, of the 5th instant, reporting in the matter of the arrest of Francisco Freitas for failure to perform military service in Portugal.
You state that the position of the Portuguese Government is that as Mr. Freitas was drafted before his alleged naturalization in the United States, he became liable to perform military duty on returning to Portuguese territory.
In reply I inclose copy of Mr. Freitas’s (Fratus) application to this department for a passport.
This application, upon which passport No. 21139 was issued, September 25, 1906, shows that Freitas came to the United States when he was a little over 16 years of age; that he was duly naturalized as a citizen of the United States September 17, 1906, when he was 23 years old, after he had resided in the United States for seven years. He swore, when he applied for his passport, that he intended to return to the United States in three months. The consul at Funchal, Madeira, of which island Freitas is a native, reported in his dispatch of November 19, 1906, that Freitas had been seized for military service while on a visit to his people, and that he had left his wife and child in the United States. There is therefore no reason for suspecting that he left the United States with the intention of remaining abroad. The contention of the Portuguese Government as reported in your No. 291 is that Freitas was drafted in 1904, before his naturalization. It is quite true that he was not then a citizen of the United States, but he had been domiciled in this country for five years. If he had been drafted before emigration the position of the Portuguese Government would be one which this Government could not contest, but it can not acquiesce in the right of the Portuguese Government to draft one who is domiciled in the United States, who committed no offense against Portuguese military law when, [Page 961] or before, he emigrated, and who, coming here in good faith to cast in his fortunes with the United States, became lawfully naturalized, and then proceeded abroad, as he had a perfect right to do, on a short visit.
The department thinks you should press the case and ask for Freitas’s release. The controversy gives point to our recent instruction looking to a naturalization convention between the two countries.
I am, etc.,