763.72112/980½
President Wilson to the Secretary of State
My Dear Mr. Secretary: I have read this memorandum with a great deal of interest; but I think it practically useless to ask such question of Great Britain or to argue with her questions of consistency, as between one Order in Council and another, for example.
The note might be drawn in this way, however, following the general lines of the sketch I sent you the other day:
After the introductory portion, we might speak, as I did in the sketch, of the unusual character of the blockade, and then say that, reading this Order in Council in connection with the former Order (of such and such a date) in which His Majesty’s Government announced its adoption of the Declaration of London except with regard to questions of contraband, we would take it for granted that this, though in appearance a blockade of neutral as well as of hostile coasts, was not meant to be so in effect, and that the instructions given the commanders of His Majesty’s ships of war engaged in the blockade would be very explicit in this sense, etc., etc.,—as in other memorandum which I sent.
Faithfully Yours,