Office of the Historian

File No. 763.72112/1045

The Ambassador in Germany (Gerard) to the Secretary of State

[Telegram]
Berlin, April 21, 1915, 8 p.m.
[Received April 23, 8 a. m.]

2097. Ordinance published April 20 proclaims as retaliatory measure following modifications German prize ordinance:

Amendments of absolute contraband schedule:

3.
Powder and explosives of all kinds.
4.
Cannon barrels, gun mountings, limber boxes, limbers, field kitchens and bakeries, supply wagons, field forges, searchlight accessories and their distinctive component parts.
5.
Range finders and their’ distinctive component parts.
6.
Field glasses, telescopes, chronometers and all kinds of nautical instruments.
7–11.
Same as Nos. 5 to 9 formerly.
12.
Lead, pig, sheet or pipe.
13.
Barbed wire and implements for fixing and cutting the same.
14.
Tin plate.
15.
Same as 10 formerly, adding ship plates and construction steel.
16.
Submarine sound-signaling apparatus.
17.
Aeroplanes, etc., same as No. 23, Schedule 1, British list.
18.
Implements and apparatus designed exclusively for the manufacture and repair of arms and munitions of war.
19.
Lathes of all kinds.
20.
Mining lumber.
21.
Coal and coke.
22.
Flax.

Amendments of conditional contraband schedule:

4.
Wool from animals raw or dressed, together with woolen carded yarns and worsted yarns.
5.
Same as No. 4 formerly.
6.
Vehicles of all kinds, especially motor vehicles available for use in war and their component parts.
7.
Rubber tires for motor vehicles together with articles or materials especially adapted for use in manufacture or repair of rubber tires.
8.
Rubber and gutta-percha together with goods made thereof.
9.
Same as 7 formerly.
10.
Fuel except coal and coke; lubricant.
11.
Sulphur, sulphuric acid, nitric acid.
[12.
Unchanged.]
13.
Following ores: wolframite, scheelite, molybdenite, manganese ore, nickel ore, hematite iron ore, lead ore.
14.
Following metals: wolfram, molybdenite, vanadium, nickel, selenium, cobalt, hematite, pig iron, manganese, aluminum, copper.
15.
Antimony, together with sulphides and oxides of antimony.
16.
Ferro alloys as in British Schedule 1, No. 6.
17.
Same as 13 formerly.
18.
Leather treated and untreated when suitable for saddlery, harness, military boots or military clothing.
19.
Tanning materials of all kinds, including extracts used in tanning.
20.
All kinds of lumber, rough or treated, especially hewn, sawed, planed, fluted, except mining lumber, tar of charcoal.
21.
Same as 6 formerly.

Schedule of non-contraband amended accordingly:

Article 33 thus amended: “In the absence of conditions to the contrary the hostile destination referred to in Article 32 is to be presumed when: (a) The goods are consigned to an enemy authority or the agent of such or to a dealer shown to have supplied articles of the kind in question or products thereof to the armed forces or the administrative authorities of the enemy state; (b) the goods are consigned to order or the ship’s papers do not show who is the consignee or goods are consigned to a person in territory belonging to [or occupied] by the enemy; (c) goods are destined for an armed place of the enemy or a place serving as a base of operations or supplies to the armed forces of the enemy. Purchasers [merchant vessels] themselves are not to be considered as detained [destined] for the armed place [forces] or the administrative authorities of enemy solely for the reason that they are found en route to one of the places referred to under (c).”

Article 35 thus is amended: “Articles of conditional contraband are liable to seizure only on a vessel en route to territory belonging to or occupied by the enemy or to the armed forces of the enemy and such vessel is not to unload these articles in an intermediate neutral port, that is to say, in a port at which the vessel is to call previous to reaching the destination designated. This paragraph shall not apply if the conditions provided by Article 33 (b) are present, or if the ship is bound for a neutral country with regard to which it is shown that the enemy Government draws articles of kind in question from that country.”

[Page 164]

Article 40 thus amended: “A ship cannot be captured on the ground of an already completed voyage carrying contraband. If, however, the vessel carried contraband to the enemy contrary to indications of the ship’s papers it seems liable to capture and condemnation until the end of the war.”

Copies of this ordinance will be forwarded in the pouch leaving 24th.

Gerard