File No. 611.627/254a.
The Secretary of State to the American Ambassador.
Because he attaches such value to harmonious relations, commercial and diplomatic, with Germany, it is with regret, as well as surprise, that the President hears reports of unsympathetic reception of all the efforts recently made at Berlin by the interested Americans to settle with diplomatic good offices the potash question, wherein Americans claim to have been treated in a manner both inequitable and unfriendly, and at the indifference still further evidenced by the fact that the German ambassador now disclaims all authority even to discuss the matter.
Unable to explain the attitude of the Imperial German Government except upon the theory that the true feeling of the Government of the United States may not have been correctly interpreted, the President finds another disquieting element in the situation in persistent reports from several quarters that Count Bernstorff has minimized the interest of the United States in the question, although this could scarcely be credited, inasmuch as from the first the Secretary of State went to great lengths to impress upon him, with quite unusual emphasis, the earnestness of the United States.
It is wholly pertinent to recall also the following facts: First, that, as part of the tariff negotiations, the Government of the United States protested against the first projected bill, which made no provision for equitable dealing with American contracts; second, that the Imperial German Government next withdrew that project of law; third, that the tariff arrangement extending the minimum was then concluded; fourth, that thereupon the Imperial German Government projected a new law with a provision perfectly adapted to [Page 221] protect the American contracts; fifth, and most significant of all, that the American ambassador at Berlin then received from the minister for foreign affairs and wrote down in his presence1 positive assurance that the American contracts would not be affected.
The impression of the Government of the United States would be a painful one if, especially when ready remedial governmental action is open to the chancellor through the law and the Bundesrath, the Imperial German Government so ill-reciprocated the conciliatory feeling of the United States toward German interests as to remain longer inactive in the face of the situation thus created; and the President would be compelled to regard the absence of a disposition to some just and prompt solution as seriously disturbing those reciprocal and equitable commercial relations which he had supposed were equally prized by both Governments.
You will present the foregoing textually to the German Government, and inasmuch as the subject is so important as to be receiving the close attention of the President, he desires to have it brought to the special attention of His Majesty the Emperor.
- See below, the Ambassador’s despatch 893, Feb. 8, next to last paragraph.↩