File No. 702.6211/219.
The German Ambassador to the Secretary of State.
Washington, April 16, 1915.
Mr. Secretary of State: Your excellency was so good as to inform me by your kind note of the 10th instant1 that the authorities of the State of Washington had been instructed, irrespective of the question whether or not the charges brought against Consul Müller and Secretary Schulz are well founded, to take no measure that is not in harmony with the laws of the United States.
I have the honor most respectfully to observe to your excellency that the authorities of the State of Washington in compliance with the instructions given them by your excellency should, in my opinion, first put an end to a situation which breaks that harmony which your excellency acknowledges to be necessary between the State and the Federal law.
It is now a month since Consul Müller and Secretary Schulz have been held to bail in the sum of $1,000 each unlawfully imposed upon them. This situation, which I have tried to remedy in two oral interviews and five previous notes and communications, will not however be brought to an end by the State authorities of Washington until they are positively directed to do so; for they might have interpreted the instruction to take no action that conflicts with the Federal law in the narrow sense, surely not intended by your excellency, or as merely forbidding them to take any positive action in the future in violation of the Federal law. I, on the other hand, simply asked for the recall of a measure taken in the past the effects of which are still felt in the present.
I have the honor most urgently to beg your excellency once more to cause the situation, the unlawfulness of which is not open to doubt, to be brought to an early end.
Accept [etc.]
- Not printed.↩