File No. 763.72111G27/21
The Acting Secretary of State to the German Ambassador (Bernstorff)
Washington, November 27, 1914.
Excellency: The Department has received your note of the 11th instant in regard to the two officers of H. M. S. Geier and their [Page 591] orderlies, who left that vessel before it was interned, but who have with the remainder of its complement been interned within United States jurisdiction. You ask that, as the actual internment of the vessel took place on the 7th instant, and as the officers and their orderlies left Honolulu on the 28th ultimo, the case be reexamined and the officers and their orderlies be released.
In reply I have the honor to advise you that case has been carefully reexamined and that this Government, in its observance of a strict neutrality, is under obligation to retain these gentlemen in custody as a part of the Geier’s company when she entered American jurisdiction. It appears that these men were not only duly incorporated in the armed forces of Germany, a belligerent power, but were also in a sense a part of an organized body of such forces entering a neutral port. In such a case the laws of maritime warfare permit a limited hospitality to be extended to them, dependent upon their observing certain conditions. In the case of the Geier, these conditions were, it is believed, very generous. After a delay of several days within the hospitality of the United States, instead of the conventional twenty-four hours, these officers and their orderlies appear to have been granted sick leave by the captain of the Geier . This fact, however, can not, it is believed, properly be urged as separating them from the Geier in relation to its subsequent treatment. They arrived within United States jurisdiction as a part of an organized armed force of the German Empire, and this fact, in the opinion of this Government, appears to be the crux of the whole matter. Were a distinction to be made on the grounds set forth in your note a ship in danger from her enemy might enter a neutral port, and before the twenty-four hour period had elapsed, and before there was any danger of internment, her officers and crew might leave her and afterwards claim the right to return to their country as individuals. This course would manifestly not comport with the principles of neutrality as they are understood by the Department.
Your excellency compares the case of these officers and men of H. M. S. Geier with that of Major Robertson of the British Army, who appears to have been taken into custody by American officers and shortly thereafter released. The Department is of the opinion that the two incidents have no essential resemblance. Major Robertson arrived in the United States as an individual and not as a part of an organized military body traveling together. The United States, therefore, in its governmental capacity as a neutral, was not bound under the principles of international law to intern him or to interfere with his freedom of movement so long as his conduct did not infringe the proprieties of international or municipal law.
The Department regrets, therefore, to advise you that this Government, after having carefully reexamined the case, does not see its way to release the officers and their orderlies in question, or to consider them other than as a part of the complement of H. M. S. Geier , which the United States Government has been under the necessity of having interned during the continuance of the present war.
Accept [etc.]