File No. 367.114M69/159.
I shall forward copy of my reply as soon as it has been communicated to
the Sublime Porte.
[Inclosure.—Translation.]
The Minister for Foreign
Affairs to the American
Embassy.
Sublime Porte,
Ministry for
Foreign Affairs,
Constantinople,
July 15, 1912.
Mr. Ambassador: I have had the honor to
receive the note in which your excellency, referring to previous
communications from the Embassy of the United States of America,
feels called upon to protest against the imprisonment and trial by
the Ottoman judicial authorities of Captain Spiro Macris, who was in
command of the Texas at the time of her
shipwreck; to request the suspension of the inquiry until a detailed
sketch of the locality of the accident should be furnished to the
Embassy; and finally to demand the transfer of the judicial action
and the surrender of the accused to American consular
jurisdiction.
In seizing this occasion to repeat to your excellency how much I
deplore this accident, which caused the death of a large number of
Ottoman subject’s, as well as the loss of a ship flying the American
flag, I feel obliged to point out that the judicial proceedings
brought against the said captain have been amply Justified by grave
evidence establishing his responsibility, of which the competent
Ottoman tribunal will have to judge the value.
Although for pressing reasons of national defense in time of war
(reasons already known, if I am not mistaken, to the Embassy and the
American Consulate at Smyrna) the military authorities had been
unable to furnish the sketch demanded by your excellency, the
notices from my Department,
[Page 1328]
dated May 19th and 30th, as well as the
information gathered on the spot by the representatives of the
Embassy, ought to have enlightened your excellency about the
circumstances which brought about this deplorable accident.
This written and verbal information has demonstrated clearly that, in
spite of the scrupulous care with which the Imperial authorities at
Smyrna had particularly drawn the attention of the Hadji Daoud
Company to the inexplicable negligence of its captains in complying
with the regulations made solely in the very interest of the safety
of vessels, the captain of the Texas on the
day of the accident, following the custom of the captains of the
company, did not heed the blank and loaded shots fired by the
battery and had himself run against a torpedo.
The imprudence or the bravado with which the said captains prided
themselves in transgressing the regulations was fated to end in this
catastrophe, and it is not difficult to imagine the spirit in which
the company and its employees now seek to cast all the odium of it
upon our military authorities, and that, too, against all evidence
and against all the abstract and concrete proof establishing in such
an overwhelming manner the fact that the loaded shots were not aimed
to strike the vessel and did not and could not hit it nor sink
it.
The judicial proceedings intended to establish Captain Macris’
responsibility are therefore absolutely legitimate, and I find it
impossible to arrest their course, particularly as my Department and
the Imperial authorities at Smyrna have already enlightened the
Embassy of the Republic upon the circumstances of the accident
without its seeming necessary to unmask the whole system of defense
of a port which is continually menaced by the enemy.
Regarding the competency of the American Consular Court, I am
constrained to point out, while reserving the Imperial Government’s
point of view concerning Article IV of the Treaty of 1830, that in
this complicated case, where grave Ottoman interests are at stake,
the accused, who is not of American nationality, was arrested
outside of his ship, which was as a matter of fact lost, and that he
is being prosecuted for having caused injury to the said Ottoman
interests.
There cannot therefore be any question of the competence of the
American Consulate.
As to the reserves formulated by the Embassy of the Republic in the
last paragraph of its note verbale of June 8, I need not remark that
the Imperial Government cannot under any circumstances admit any
responsibility whatever in connection with an accident due solely to
the fault of Captain Macris, and that, on the contrary, it reserves
all rights to an indemnity for losses caused to individuals and to
the Ottoman State.
I seize [etc.]
