File No. 812.00/1011.
[Untitled]
Replying to the Mexican Embassy’s memorandum of the 20th instant concerning the detention by the local authorities at Del Rio, Tex., of a shipment of 30 rifles and 19,000 cartridges alleged to be intended for the insurrectionists in Mexico, the Department of State has the honor to say that copies of the memorandum have been sent to the Departments of War and Justice with the request that the appropriate action be taken.
In this connection, however, the Department takes occasion to invite the embassy’s attention to the Department’s notes of January 24 and 28 and February 11, 1911, in which it was pointed out that mere commercial trading in arms and ammunition is forbidden neither by the rules of international law nor by the so-called neutrality statutes of the United States, as has been clearly set forth by the Federal courts in the case of The United States v. Murphy, to which his excellency the Mexican ambassador was good enough to direct the attention of this Government and from which the Department had the honor to quote in its note of January 24.
Washington, March 24, 1911.