Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, The Lansing Papers, 1914–1920, Volume I

341.622A/154½

The Ambassador in Great Britain (Page) to the Secretary of State

London, May 22, 1916.
[Received June 5.]

Dear Mr. Lansing: There’s a little inside history of the China case that may interest you.⁹⁶ When your first telegram⁹⁷ about it came to me there was one of the recurring Cabinet “crises”, which at intervals almost paralyze the Government. I laid the case before Sir Edward Grey who was ill and was on the eve of going off to rest. He sent it to the Admiralty and some Admiralty lawyer wrote the first answer we got,⁹⁸ declining to release these men. Before this answer came, I jogged Lord Crewe, Sir Edward’s locum tenens during his absence, and at last the answer came. By this time Sir Edward had returned. When I sent this answer to you, I went over the whole case with Sir Edward, now rested and well again; and I told him I was sure that this answer wd not be acceptable to you, that, in my judgment, it cd not be acceptable, that the case was another Trent case, the boot now being on the other foot. Then, I think, for the first time he began himself to look into it.

When, therefore, your next telegram came,⁹⁹ instructing me to renew the request for the release of these men, I had practically already presented it. Then I went over it again with Sir Edward, your telegram in my hand, wh I read to him, and I left with him the aide memoire as a brief record of my presentation of the case—now twice done. This was, of course, the most formal and at the same time the most free and elastic method of presentation and a method wh, I have found, is likely to bring quicker results in this slow Kingdom than any other. An elaborate Note is handed over to a departmental lawyer and we hear from it—when the cows come home. An Aide Memoire, given when a thorough verbal discussion has been made, leaves it in the Secretary’s own hands: he’s obliged to take it up himself. I shall, however, remember your preference for Notes.—I had by this time brought Sir Edward to see the case as we saw it. He told me as much. But he then had to make the Admiralty back water: it was they who really gave the first answer that he signed. And he did overrule them and told me that the men wd be released.

Then a new chapter began. All the while the Intelligence Bureau of the Admiralty (the Spy department, or, as we say, the Secret Service) had information that some of these men were actually incorporated in the armed forces of Germany—were, in fact, officers, receiving officers’ pay. But the Intelligence Bureau had not told either Sir Edward nor the head of the Admiralty. When, at last, they did tell Sir Edward, he askd, you will recall, if you wd consent to the English retaining these men, especially if documentary proof, now in the mails from Hongkong, was forthcoming. . . . I think that they already have pretty clear proof that 6 or 7 of these men (not 15, however,) are German officers, receiving officers’ pay. It was this knowledge that caused me to suggest that we permit the English to retain these men till they shd receive all the documents about them. I indulged this impulse to be quite generous—no doubt too generous—because we had already won the case and Sir Edward had granted the principle for wh we had contended and stood quite ready to live up to his verbal promise to release them all if we insisted. And before you cd answer the telegram in wh I made that suggestion, he agreed, without further ado to release them all. So ends the incident.

But it is interesting to see how they bungled the case:

(1) In the first place if the commander of the Laurentic had kept his hands off the China, all these men wd have disembarked at a Japanese port, where they cd lawfully have been taken in custody.

(2) Then, but for a Cabinet “crisis” and Sir Edward’s necessary absence, he wd have taken the case up himself in the first place, and it wd have been settled long ago.

(3) Then the Intelligence Bureau made a mess of it by withholding their information from their superiors—this, probably to our advantage, but surely much to the confusion of the British Government; and I hear that there is now a good deal of a row between the Departments on this account.

All of which confirms an observation that I have had frequent occasion to make to myself—that, whatever other things may be perfect in this world, no great complex government can be. Surely the one near wh I reside is not. But I must say, as the issue of this incident again proves, its Chief Foreign Secretary is a man of honor and of his word and it is a pleasure to deal with so true a gentleman, especially when I have, as in this case, the cold end of the poker.

Sincerely yours,

Walter H. Page

96. For correspondence previously printed concerning this case, see ibid., pp. 632 ff.
97. Ibid., p. 632.
98. Ibid., p. 633.
99. Foreign Relations, 1916, supp., p. 637.