The Department of State to the French Embassy 1
Memorandum
The Government of the United States has received the identic memoranda of the Governments of France, Great Britain, Russia, and Japan in which neutral governments are exhorted “to take efficacious measures tending to prevent belligerent submarines, regardless of their use, to avail themselves of neutral waters, roadsteads, and harbors.” These Governments point out the facility possessed by such craft to avoid supervision or surveillance or determination of their national character and their power “to do injury that is inherent in very nature,” as well as the “additional facilities” afforded by having at their disposal places where they can rest and replenish their supplies. Apparently on these grounds the Allied Governments hold that “submarine vessels must be excluded from the benefit of the rules heretofore accepted under international [Page 771] law regarding the admission and sojourn of war and merchant vessels in neutral waters, roadsteads, or harbors; any submarine of a belligerent that once enters a neutral harbor must be held there,” and, therefore, the Allied Governments “warn neutral powers of the great danger to neutral submarines attending the navigation of waters visited by the submarines of belligerents.”
In reply the Government of the United States must express its surprise that there appears to be an endeavor of the Allied powers to determine the rule of action governing what they regard as a “novel situation” in respect to the use of submarines in time of war and to enforce acceptance of that rule, at least in part, by warning neutral powers of the great danger to their submarines in waters that may be visited by belligerent submarines. In the opinion of the Government of the United States the Allied powers have not set forth any circumstances, nor is the Government of the United States at present aware of any circumstances, concerning the use of war or merchant submarines which would render the existing rules of international law inapplicable to them. In view of this fact and of the notice and warning of the Allied powers announced in their memoranda under acknowledgment, it is incumbent upon the Government of the United States to notify the Governments of France, Great Britain, Russia, and Japan that, so far as the treatment of either war or merchant submarines in American waters is concerned, the Government of the United States reserves its liberty of action in all respects and will treat such vessels as, in its opinion, becomes the action of a power which may be said to have taken the first steps toward establishing the principles of neutrality and which for over a century has maintained those principles in the traditional spirit and with the high sense of impartiality in which they were conceived.
In order, however, that there should be no misunderstanding as to the attitude of the United States, the Government of the United States announces to the Allied powers that it holds it to be the duty of belligerent powers to distinguish between submarines of neutral and belligerent nationality, and that responsibility for any conflict that may arise between belligerent warships and neutral submarines on account of the neglect of a belligerent to so distinguish between these classes of submarines must rest entirely upon the negligent power.
- The same to the British, Russian, and Japanese Embassies, August 31, and mutatis mutandis to the Italian Embassy, September 8, 1916, and to the Portuguese Legation, September 13, 1916.↩