File No. 841.731/82
The Ambassador in Great Britain (Page) to the Secretary of State
London, November 25, 1914, 7 p.m.
[Telegram]
1138. Your 582, November 20. The Swiss Minister and I have [made] joint protest to Sir Edward Grey regarding censor’s suppression private commercial telegrams between the United States and Switzerland and I repeated separate notice regarding suppressed private commercial telegrams between the United States and Denmark. Grey regretted we could not show him particular telegrams of which complaint is made. He implied that each suppressed telegram would indicate the reason for its suppression.
I reminded him of my previous complaints and of the lack of satisfaction, and in a general conversation about censorship I informed him of the American newspaper dissatisfaction and criticism as well as commercial complaints and losses.
He confessed personal ignorance of censorship, explained that censors have been changed and that the war office conduct it. He knows also the widespread British commercial dissatisfaction. The most definite hope I got was from his assertion that he had put our protest in the hands of the Prime Minister and would inform me what Mr. Asquith reports to him.
Unless some understanding has been reached of which I have not been advised, British Government as a war measure has the [power] to suppress what messages it chooses that come over cables here; but criticism from many quarters is becoming so insistent that I hope some relaxing of rules will come. I am convinced that no commercial considerations play any part in their suppression but only the autocratic methods of the War Department.