Office of the Historian

File No. 763.72111/616

The Secretary of State to the Secretary of the Treasury (McAdoo)

Department of State,
Washington, November 14, 1914.

Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your Department’s letters of November 7 and November 9, 1914, in further relation [Page 632] to the S. S. Evelyn , which, it was stated by the British Embassy at this capital, was operating in the interests of Germany.1

In reply I have the honor to refer, in this relation, to the Department’s telegram of October 31 [November 1] in the Amistà case, and to say that the Department will be glad to have the collectors of customs instructed, if such action has not already been taken, to ascertain as far as possible in each case of an incoming vessel when she last left an American port, and whether she has transshipped any of her cargo to cruisers at sea.2

I have [etc.]

For the Secretary of State:
Robert Lansing

Counselor
  1. Not printed.↩
  2. Sworn statements on these points were thereafter required from the masters and forwarded to the Department of State.↩