File No. 367.54/25a.
The Secretary of State to the Minister of Switzerland.
Washington, June 2, 1915.
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your note of May 29, referring to the status of the Swiss citizens in Turkey whose protection the Government of the United States has taken over, and informing the Department that your Government has instructed you “to strongly insist that the Swiss citizens under American protection in Turkey be assimilated with the citizens of the United States as the Swiss protected by Germany and France have always been assimilated with the nationals of those countries.”
I regret that it is impossible for the Department to take the position that the Swiss citizens under American protection in Turkey can be assimilated with the citizens of the United States. The position on a matter of this kind which the Department is compelled to assume in accordance with the Constitution and laws of the United States is clearly shown by those pages of Moore’s International Law Digest to which you refer in your note. The Department’s circulars of June 16, 1871, and December 15, 1871, relative to this matter, there referred to, were as follows:
Department of State,
Washington, June 16, 1871.
To the Diplomatic and Consular Officers of the United States.
Gentlemen: His Excellency the President of the Swiss Confederation has expressed to this Department, through the Minister of the United States accredited to that Government, a wish that you would severally extend your protection [Page 1300] to Swiss citizens who may desire it and who may be sojourning at places where there are no diplomatic or consular representatives of that Republic.
This Government has, on more than one occasion, upon the request of friendly powers, given to its diplomatic and consular representatives permission 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 to amount simply to the granting of the services of our agents, with their own consent, to meet what has ordinarily been a fortuitous and temporary exigency of the friendly government. When this function is accepted, 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 is alone responsible for his acts in relation thereto.
With this understanding of the obligations, you are authorized, with the consent of the authorities of the country or place where you officially reside, to extend such protection to Swiss citizens whenever it may be required or needed. It is expected, however, that, in complying with this authority, you will exercise due discretion, and will be careful not to give just cause of offense in any quarter.
I am [etc.]
Hamilton Fish.
Department of State,
Washington, December 15, 1871.
To the Diplomatic and Consular Officers of the United States.
Sir: Information has reached this Department that the purpose of its Circular No. 11, of the 16th of June last, relative to the protection of citizens of Switzerland, may, in some instances, have been misunderstood. You are consequently informed that you were not, for that purpose, expected to become a diplomatic or consular officer of that Republic, which is prohibited by the Constitution to officers of the United States who are citizens. The intention was that you should merely use your good offices in behalf of any Swiss in your vicinity who might request them in the absence of a diplomatic or consular representative of Switzerland, and with the consent of the authorities where you reside.
I am [etc.]
Hamilton Fish.
In an instruction dated December 18, 1873, to the American Consul at Smyrna, the Department stated:
In authorizing the Diplomatic and Consular officers of the United States, by the circulars No. 11, of the 16th of June and No. 15 of the 15th of December, 1871, to extend protection to Swiss citizens in certain cases, it was not contemplated that those citizens were to be registered as entitled to the same protection as citizens of the United States. The purpose was to allow the good offices of the Ministers or Consuls to be employed in any particular case in which the Swiss citizen might suppose himself to have been aggrieved when such good offices should be solicited with a view to redress.
Even the employment of good offices on such occasions, however, was made conditional upon the consent of the local authorities.
The Department has already instructed the American Ambassador at Constantinople to use his good offices to afford Swiss citizens in Turkey ample protection, and cannot see its way clear to send any more explicit instructions relative to this matter.
Accept [etc.]