File No. 763.72/1438
[Enclosure]
Memorandum of the German Government concerning
retaliation against Great Britain’s illegal interference
with trade between neutrals and Germany
Since the beginning of the present war Great Britain has carried
on a mercantile warfare against Germany in a way that defies all
the principles of international law. It is true the British
Government has announced in a number of decrees the London
declaration concerning naval warfare to be binding on its naval
forces, but in reality she has renounced the declaration in its
most important particulars, although her own delegates at the
London Conference on Naval Warfare had recognized its
conclusions to be valid as international law.
The British Government has put a number of articles in the list
of contraband which are not or at most only indirectly useful
for military purposes and therefore according to the London
declaration as well as according to the universally recognized
rules of international law may not be designated as contraband.
She has further actually abolished the distinction between
absolute and relative contraband, inasmuch as she has subjected
to capture all articles of relative contraband intended for
Germany without reference to the harbor in which they are to be
unloaded or to the hostile or peaceful use to which they are to
be put.
She does not even hesitate to violate the Paris declaration, as
her naval forces have seized on neutral ships German property
that was not contraband, in violation of her own desires
concerning the London declaration she has further through her
naval forces taken from neutral ships numerous Germans liable to
military service and has made of them prisoners of war. Finally
she has declared the entire North Sea to be an area of war, and
if she has not made impossible the passage of neutral shipping
through the sea between Scotland and Norway, has rendered it so
difficult and so dangerous, that she has to a certain extent
effected a blockade of neutral coasts and neutral ports in
violation of all international law.
All these measures have the obvious purpose through the illegal
paralyzation of legitimate neutral commerce not only to strike
at the German military strength, but also at the economic life
of Germany and finally through starvation doom the entire
population of Germany to destruction.
The neutral powers have generally acquiesced in the steps taken
by the English Government, especially they have not succeeded in
inducing the British Government to restore the German
individuals and property seized in violation of international
law. In certain directions they have also aided the British
measures, which are irreconcilable with the freedom of the sea,
in that they have obviously under the pressure of England
hindered by export and transit embargoes the transit of wares
for peaceful purposes to Germany. The German Government has in
vain called the attention of neutral powers to the fact, that it
must face the question of whether it can longer persevere in its
hitherto strict observance of the rules of the London
declaration, if Great Britain were to continue its course, and
the neutral powers were to continue to acquiesce in these
violations of neutrality to the detriment of Germany; for her
violations of international law Great Britain pleads the vital
interests which the British Empire has at stake, and the neutral
powers seem to satisfy themselves with theoretical protest.
Therefore in fact they, accept the vital interests of
belligerents as sufficient excuse for every method of warfare.
Germany must now appeal to these same vital interests to its
regret. It therefore sees itself forced to military measures
aimed at England in retaliation against the English procedure.
Just as England has designated the area between Scotland and
Norway as an area of war, so Germany now declares all the waters
surrounding Great Britain and Ireland including the entire
English Channel as an area of war, and thus will proceed against
the shipping of the enemy.
For this purpose beginning February 18, 1915, it will endeavor to
destroy every enemy merchant ship that is found in this area of
war without its always being possible to avert the peril, that
thus threatens persons and cargoes. Neutrals are therefore
warned against further entrusting crews, passengers and wares to
such ships. Their attention also called to the fact, that it is
advisable for their ships to avoid entering this area, for even
though the German naval forces have instructions to avoid
violence to neutral ships in so far as they are recognizable, in
view of the misuse of neutral flags ordered by the British
Government and the contingencies of naval warfare their becoming
[Page 97] victims of torpedoes
directed against enemy ships cannot always be avoided; at the
same time it is specifically noted that shipping north of
Shetland Islands in the eastern area of the North Sea and in a
strip of at least thirty sea miles in the width along the
Netherlands coast is not imperiled. The German Government gives
such early notice of these measures, that hostile as well as
neutral ships may have time accordingly to adapt their plans for
landing at ports in this area of war and may expect that the
neutral powers will show no less consideration for the vital
interests of Germany than for those of England and will aid in
keeping their citizens and the property of the latter from this
area. This is the more to be expected, as it must be to the
interest of the neutral powers to see this destructive war end
as soon as possible.
Berlin
,
February 4,
1915.
