File No. 704.6712/6a.

The Secretary of State to the Chargé d’Affaires of Turkey .

Sir: In compliance with your recent oral request, I take pleasure in sending you enclosed a memorandum on the subject of the protection by diplomatic and consular officers of the United States of the interests of citizens or subjects of a third country at places where their own government has no diplomatic or consular representatives.

I am [etc.]

Robert Lansing.
[Inclosure.]

memorandum.

In a note dated December 7, 1914, the Turkish Chargé d’Affaires at Washington stated that his Government, pending the appointment of an Ottoman consular agent, was desirous of placing the interests of Ottoman subjects residing in Mexico in the hands of the United States diplomatic and consular representatives in that country, and inquired whether the United States would extend this courtesy to the Turkish Government.

On January 11, 1915, the Department telegraphed the Embassy at Constantinople that officers of the United States in Mexico had been authorized to use unofficial good offices in behalf of Ottoman subjects in Mexico.

On January 13, 1915, the Turkish Chargé d’Affaires in Washington was informed that this Government had instructed its officers in Mexico to use unofficial good offices in behalf of Ottoman subjects who might require them, in accordance with paragraph 174 of the Consular Regulations.

On March 10, 1915, the American Ambassador at Constantinople transmitted to the Department of State a note verbale from the Turkish Foreign Office dated March 9, stating that the use of unofficial good offices in favor of Ottoman subjects who found need to have recourse to them, in accordance with paragraph 174 of the Consular Regulations, did not express effective protection and that the Turkish Chargé d’Affaires at Washington had been directed to take the matter up further with the Department of State in order that the officers of the United States might be charged with the official protection of Ottoman subjects in Mexico.

Oral request has been made by the Turkish Chargé d’Affaires for an interpretation of paragraph 174 of the Consular Regulations. The paragraph mentioned reads as follows: [Page 1078]

174. Requests hare occasionally been made upon the Government of the United States to permit its diplomatic and consular officers to extend their protection to citizens or subjects of a foreign government who may desire it and who may be sojourning at places where there are no diplomatic or consular representatives of that government This Government has from time to time, upon the request of friendly powers, given to its diplomatic and consular officers authority to take upon themselves, with the consent of the government within whose jurisdiction they reside, the function of representing those powers at places where the latter had no such officers. It has understood this authority to be restricted simply to the granting of the services and good offices of our representatives, with their own consent, to meet what has ordinarily been a fortuitous and temporary exigency of the friendly government. When this function is accepted—which must be done only with the approval of the Department of State—the diplomatic or consular officer becomes the agent of the foreign government as to the duties he may perform for its citizens or subjects. He becomes responsible to it for his discharge of those duties, and that government alone is responsible for his acts in relation thereto. He does not, however, for this purpose, become a diplomatic or consular officer of the foreign government.

The Constitution of the United States prohibits any one who holds an office of profit or trust under the United States to accept, without the authority of the Congress of the United States, any office of any kind whatever from any foreign State. Hence for the purpose of the protection of citizens or subjects of a foreign State diplomatic and consular officers of the United States cannot become officers of the foreign State, the intention of the Department of State in authorizing the exercise of such protection being merely the use, with the consent of the authorities of the countries where such officers reside, of their good offices in behalf of the citizens or subjects of such foreign country in their vicinity who might request them in the absence of diplomatic or consular representatives of their own country. As before stated such officers cannot become officers of the foreign government, and consequently they could not officially represent that government. They are agents of that government not in the sense of “officials,” but only as persons who at the request of that government, and with the consent of their own government and the authorities of the country in which they reside, are permitted to speak unofficially and by way of good offices in favor of any interests of such third government or its citizens or subjects. And while such officers, when so acting, are responsible to the foreign government for the acts they perform in its behalf, and that government is alone responsible for their acts in relation thereto, they do not report to that government, nor do they take its orders, their communication with it being indirectly effected through the Government of the United States.

With respect to the particular case of the protection of the interests of Ottoman subjects in Mexico, the foregoing applies only to the consular officers of the United States, the United States having no diplomatic representative of its own in Mexico.