The Secretary of State to the British Ambassador (Spring Rice)
Excellency: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your note of the 8th instant, in which you inform me that you have brought to the information of the Canadian Government this Department’s note No. 733, of April 5, concerning the appearance on the streets of Detroit of uniformed Canadian soldiers wearing filled cartridge belts.
Thanking your excellency for the action thus taken, I beg to point out that, in view of reports which the Department has received of recurrences of this practice, this Government may be under the necessity, by reason of its obligations as a neutral, to consider whether such soldiers should, upon entering American territory, be interned as troops belonging to a belligerent army.
I have [etc.]