File No. 763.72112/332
The Acting Secretary of State to the British Ambassador ( Spring Rice )
Washington , November 6, 1914.
My dear Mr. Ambassador: The Department is greatly pressed by American growers and exporters of tobacco for an indication of the position of the British Government in regard to shipments of this article. It is represented that 80 per cent of the dark tobacco grown in the States of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia is exported, and that Germany and Austria consume annually one third of our total exportation of this commodity. Complaint is made that when war was declared a great deal of tobacco that had been contracted for to be delivered in Austria, Belgium, and Germany was stopped at our shipping points here, or diverted into foreign neutral ports, so that as a result it has been impossible to make deliveries.
The tobacco growers and exporters are familiar with the cotton situation and say that it would be a great relief to them if an assurance could be obtained as to tobacco along the same lines a was obtained from the British Government as to cotton. As the sale of the 1914 crop will begin about the middle of this month and as it is most important from the point of view of popular opinion in the United States, especially in the southern portion where conditions resulting from the war have caused very great hardship and not a little distress, it would be very gratifying if you could find it possible to give an assurance to me, which may be published, to the effect that as tobacco is not on any of the contraband lists of Great Britain, the British Government has no intention of interfering with shipments in neutral bottoms to any countries in Europe.
I am [etc.]