File No. 763.72112/2652
The Chairman of the Central Committee of the American Red Cross (ex-President Taft ) to the Secretary of State
[Received June 12.]
My Dear Mr. Secretary: Replying to the letter from your Department of June 2,2 relative to the question of the shipment of Red Cross supplies to the Central powers, which was in answer to my letters of May 8,3 and May 27,2 I beg to add the following:
In a communication dated March 27, from the British Foreign Office, which was transmitted by your Department to the American Red Cross, occurred the following paragraph:
Your excellency will be aware from my note of the 22d instant that His Majesty’s Government have felt obliged to withdraw the lists of articles which they previously put forward as coming within the meaning of the provisions of the Declaration of London regarding articles serving exclusively to aid the sick and wounded. His Majesty’s Government have recognized one general exception to the restrictions imposed on the importation of medical stores into enemy countries, namely, that any supplies sent by the American Red Cross to an American medical or hospital unit in an enemy country will be allowed to pass freely into that country so far as His Majesty’s Government are concerned.
In commenting on this in my letter of May 8 to you I said:
Through your Department we are now in receipt of a communication from the British Government, announcing that it does not intend to permit any further shipment, unless it is a shipment to our own hospital units, in a territory of the Central powers. This exception amounts to no concession, for the reason that as the British Government was advised in August last, after the first of October, for lack of funds, we were able to maintain no hospital units in any of the belligerent countries.
As a possible solution to the difference which now exists in our view of the obligation of the British Government under the Geneva convention and its announced policy in limiting the permits for shipments of medical supplies to the Red Cross hospital units in the territory of the Central powers, I beg to suggest, on behalf of the American Red Cross, that while we have no further funds with which to maintain medical or hospital units in the territory of the Central powers, we would be able to send over a commission of satisfactory persons to receive our shipments and to superintend their distribution to hospitals and to supervise their use. This commission would be composed of persons for whose good faith the Red Cross would vouch in seeing to it that the supplies were devoted to hospital purposes only and to the relief of the sick and wounded.
The Red Cross would be glad to submit the names of the persons constituting such commission to His Majesty’s Government before appointing them. We have been very hopeful that the British Government would change its view as expressed in the correspondence already referred to, but if it maintains its position, we venture to make this proposal as a counter-proposition, with the hope that you will submit it to the British Government on receipt of their reply to our letter of May 8, which, as you say in your last communication, you have already forwarded.
Sincerely yours,