File No. 855.48/410
The Ambassador in Great Britain (Page) to the Secretary of State
[Received 4.20 p. m.]
5194. I have just received the following note from Lord Grey:
Foreign Office, November 22, 1916 .
My Dear Ambassador: (1) I venture to ask your excellency to transmit a message from me personally to your excellency’s Government in regard to a matter of which you have fuller knowledge and which you can more fully explain than would be possible for His Majesty’s Ambassador at Washington to do were I to transmit the message through him.
(2) The recent deportations from Belgium and the reported recrudescence of seizures and exports of Belgian foodstuffs cut at the root of the guarantees on which the whole relief work in Belgium is based, and while His Majesty’s Government are no less keenly anxious than in the past to fulfil their expression towards the populations of the occupied territories, it will be clear to your excellency that it may at any moment become materially impossible to continue a work the basic guarantees of which have been destroyed. I should therefore be grateful if you could communicate by telegraph to your Government a personal appeal from me that they will exert themselves at Berlin and Brussels to see that this great work of international benevolence and cooperation which I think your excellency will be able to assure your Government has never been used by His Majesty’s Government for any but purely neutral purposes, and which they have indeed regarded as of inevitable military advantage to their enemies, shall not be endangered or destroyed by acts which it is impossible for the Allied peoples to countenance or tolerate.
(3) The constant efforts and valuable services rendered by yourself [and] the United States Minister at Brussels on behalf of this work emboldens me to hope that your Government will not allow an undertaking to be imperiled with which they have become so closely identified in the eyes of the world.
(4) I have sent a similar letter to the Spanish Ambassador.
Believe me [etc.]
Grey of Fallodon