File No. 763.72111E1 1/57
The Secretary of State to the German Ambassador (Bernstorff)
My Dear Mr. Ambassador: The Department has received your notes of November 28 and December 29 last1 regarding the alleged shipment from United States ports of motor-boats, or speed boats, which you state are consigned for the use of the enemies of Germany in the prosecution of their hostile operations.
In the first place you quote from my notes of November 1 and August 27 last, with a view to showing that they are inconsistent with Article 8 of Hague Convention XIII and with the Revised Statutes of the United States, Section 5283. After rereading my notes and the treaty and the statutes I fail to find any inconsistency apparent in them, even if the Hague convention could be regarded as in force during the present war, and even if the statutes of the United States could be regarded as the measure of duty of a neutral under the principles of international law. If the municipal statutes of the country should be in advance of the requirements of international law, I understand that it is not for a foreign government to protest against their infraction so long as the infraction does not extend to the law of nations and so long as the municipal laws are impartially administered. This plies to the conclusion sought to be drawn froth Secretary Bryan’s letter to you of February 17, 1915, in regard to the supposed shipment of component parts of submarines from this country to Canada.
[Page 819]To show that your view that Article 8 of Convention XIII and Section 5283 of the Revised Statutes of the United States “forbid the building of men-of-war in a neutral country for a belligerent” is shared by Great Britain, you quote an extract from a note of the British Embassy to the Department dated August 4, 1915 [1914].1 I would refer you to the Department’s reply of August 19, 1914, in which the measure of responsibility sought to be laid down by the British Embassy was wholly repudiated by the Department as a correct statement of the rule.2
Turning now to your statements regarding the shipments of great numbers of motor-boats from the United States, I have taken the trouble again to inquire of each company to which you refer as to the verity of the reports which you mention. The Electric Boat Company of New York replied that it has not issued any financial statement to its shareholders for some time, and that therefore the statement credited to it in relation to an order for 500 launches could not be true; that it has no contract with the British Government for such boats; that the Elco Company, a branch of the Electric Boat Company, has during the past year constructed 11 wooden motorboats at its works in this country, which did not have any reinforcements fore and aft designed to strengthen the deck for the mounting of guns, and which did not have iron-covered pilot houses; that these boats are suitable for life-saving, dispatch, or other service for which boats of that Character are usually employed; and that these boats have gone under their own power to Canada where they were delivered to the purchasers and passed out of the control of the company. The Department understands that at least 10 of these motor-boats were constructed for use on inland waters of Canada and not for use in belligerent operations.
The Greenport Basin and Construction Company of Greenport, New York, states that they have sold to belligerent governments 18 motor-boats, which were delivered to Russia during the past summer; that the newspaper reports of orders for 100 for Great Britain are absolutely false, and that at the present time they have no orders whatever for such boats. The company adds that it has absolutely no information as to the use to which launches are to be put and that they have no emplacements for guns unless two or three small pipe stanchions supporting the 10-foot wooden deck beams can be considered as such. As to 10 of these boats about to be exported at the end of last August, the Government refused clearance until it was assured by the Russian Ambassador that “they have no armament whatever and are built of thin wood, and therefore can not be used in warlike operations. The naval attaché presumes that they have been ordered as means of conveyance or for patrolling of fisheries on lakes or closed seas.”
The firm of Lawley and Son Corporation of Boston states that they built six 40-foot power boats during the past summer for American citizens, who sold them to personal friends in England; and that these boats were not equipped with any guns or any structure for the erection of guns. The company adds that it is their belief [Page 820] that no forty-footer is large enough to carry a gun of suitable size to have any effect on a submarine, and that it is not large enough to withstand any kind of sea service.
It will be observed from these statements, which the Department has reason to believe are reliable, that the reports set forth in your note of November 28 were greatly exaggerated.
To the statement in your note of December 29 that you are bound to look upon the shipment of these boats as a violation of the neutrality of the United States, I must reply that, in view of the above statements, no case of violation has in my opinion been made out. Even under Article 8 of Hague Convention XIII of 1907 and Section 5283 of the Revised Statutes of the United States, upon which you appear to rely, it is necessary to show, among other things, that these motor-boats are “vessels” or navires within the meaning of these terms as used in the act and treaty respectively; that they were fitted out or armed within United States jurisdiction with the intention to cruise or engage in hostile operations against Germany; and that the United States failed to employ the “means at their disposal” to prevent the fitting out or arming of such boats or their departure from American jurisdiction. As these elements appear to me to be entirely unsubstantiated in the present case, it does not seem to me necessary further to discuss them. I am bound, consequently, to repel the charge made in your note of December 29 that the shipment of these boats constituted a violation of the neutrality of the United States. Holding this view I am under the necessity of adverting to the circumstance that as these wooden motor-boats obviously could not keep the seas unaided, and as they—at least some of them as you state—were shipped from this count as cargo, they are subject to the rules of contraband trade, including seizure and condemnation.
I am [etc.]
- Note of December 29 not printed.↩
- Foreign Relations, 1914, Supplement, p. 593.↩
- Ibid., p. 599.↩