File No. 763.72112/1019
Memorandum of the Post Office Department
[Handed to the Secretary of State March 19.]
In the absence of direct steamship service from the United States to Germany, Austria and Hungary, our parcel-post mails for those countries are dispatched via the Netherlands. The Netherlands is under no obligation to permit the dispatch via that country of parcel-post mails from the United States to countries beyond the Netherlands and consented to the arrangement for the dispatch of the parcel mails above mentioned on condition that this Department would guarantee the exclusion from said parcel-post mails of contraband of war.
Under date of January 15, the Department of State in response to this Department’s request for information to enable it to meet [Page 732] the conditions named by the Netherlands, furnished a copy of the British contraband list of the 29th of October, 1914, consisting of a schedule of articles designated as contraband and a schedule of articles designated as conditional contraband.1 The articles designated in said list as contraband are absolutely excluded from the parcel-post mails in question, but the articles designated as conditional contraband are admitted to said mails except when destined for the government of any of the three belligerent countries named or its armed forces....
Second Assistant Postmaster General