763.72112/981½
The Secretary of State to President Wilson
My Dear Mr. President: I sent you, earlier in the day, a memorandum56 which Mr. Lansing prepared before he received your outline.
I am now sending you his views on the subject, embodied in the form of a suggestion for an answer.57 It is accompanied by some general comments on the order.57a
The difference between you and him seems to me rises first from a failure of the British Government to use the word “blockade” in the Orders in Council. I cannot see that it makes a great deal of difference, because it does not really change the situation and I cannot believe that so much importance can be attached to a single word.
The word “blockade” describes a method of procedure. If the method of procedure is described in other words that mean the same, the difference cannot be material.
If by insisting upon the use of the word blockade Mr. Lansing means to insist upon the rules originally governing the blockade, it seems to me that your position is the better sustained. We cannot, I think, ignore the change in methods of warfare. If we recognize the submarine as a legitimate engine of war, we cannot ignore the change in the location of the blockade line made necessary by the use of the submarine. So far as the blockade of enemy’s ports are concerned, I believe the use of the submarine justifies the withdrawing of the cordon to a sufficient distance to protect the blockading ships.
The third point is one that gives me most difficulty—namely, their right to interfere with goods going into, or coming out of, [Page 286] Germany through a neutral country. Unless a belligerent nation has a right to extend its contraband list at will so as to include if it desires to do so every article of merchandise, I do not understand how Great Britain can assert the right to stop non-contraband goods shipped to neutral ports. It seems to me that this is quite a different thing from the right to withdraw its ships from the immediate vicinity and yet establish an effective blockade of German ports. I do not understand that any nation has ever asserted the right to blockade a neutral port merely because non-contraband goods may come out of the enemy country through that neutral port, or enter the enemy country through that port. Unless a blockade can be extended to neutral ports I do not see how merchandise can be stopped unless it is contraband and I do not understand that all merchandise may be declared contraband.
The statement which is appended to Mr. Lansing’s suggestion very clearly points out the different propositions covered by the Orders in Council.
It occurs to me that in the note as you propose it you assume that interference with non-contraband goods destined for a neutral port is not intended. The language of the Orders in Council is so clear that I am not sure that we are justified in making such an assumption. If the assumption is clearly inconsistent with the language of the Orders in Council, would it not lead to a contradiction that would embarrass us?
The matter is so important that I would like to go over the situation with you after you have read what Mr. Lansing says.
With assurances [etc.]