Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, With the Annual Message of the President Transmitted to Congress December 8, 1908

File No. 10054/32.

Minister Egan to the Secretary of State.

American Legation,
Copenhagen, June 18, 1908.

Sir: Referring to the department’s circular instruction of April 19, 1907,¹ I notice that paragraph 150 of the instructions, as amended by the Executive order of April 6, 1907, permits the issuance of a passport (emergency) “Where inconvenience or hardship would result,” etc. Paragraph 2, page 3 of the instruction, reads in part: “Emergency passports may be issued only when it is clearly shown that the person applying for the passport is about to proceed to a country to obtain admission into which a passport is obligatory.”

This last paragraph would seem to restrict the issuance of emergency passports beyond the language of the instructions, and I therefore have the honor to inquire if, for example, I would be authorized to issue emergency passports to persons desiring to enter Germany, where, I am informed, the lack of a passport is a decided “inconvenience.”

I have, etc.,

Maurice Francis Egan.

1. See Foreign Relations, 1907, p. 13.