File No. 881.00/585.
The French Chargé d’Affaires to the Secretary of State.
Washington , July 16, 1914 .
Mr. Secretary of State: In the course of the negotiations for the suppression of consular courts and the extinction of extraterritorial rights in the French Zone of the Shereefian Empire, it was occasionally objected to the representative of the Republic that it was not possible for the Powers to take any further responsibility in the fate of their Moorish protégés.
There would seem to be some foundation for that feeling. In fact under the provisions of Article 12 of the Franco-German agreement [Page 917] of, November 4, 1911, whose full scope is given in the explanatory letter, the Government of the Republic would certainly have the right after the discontinuance of the consular courts, to ask that protection be done away with, the strict legal effect of this would be to place under native jurisdiction the protégés who, under the present system, are enjoying consular jurisdiction.
But, with a view to obviating the hardships that might thereby be brought upon the Moorish subjects thus deprived of protection, the Government of the Republic is ready to declare them to be, as long as they live, under the jurisdiction of the French courts set up in the protectorate. This would place them, in this respect, on an equal footing with the persons subject to the jurisdiction of the former protecting power and not with the natives.
My Government authorizes me to make its intentions as to this known to the Federal Government, being convinced that they are likely to remove any apprehension concerning its proteges, if, after availing itself of the rights conferred upon it by the existing provisions, the Government of the Republic should procure the abolition.
I avail myself of this opportunity to enclose three copies of Louis Renault’s preface to the codes and laws in force in the French protectorate in Morocco which brings forth the value and importance of the legislative work of the protectorate.3 Showing as it does the guarantees extended to all foreigners in Morocco, that paper ought to expedite adhesion to the new system on the part of the few powers that have not yet relinquished the exercise of consular jurisdiction.
Be pleased, [etc.]
- Not printed.↩