File No. 763.72112/3203

The Secretary of State to the French Ambassador ( Jusserand )

No. 1796

Excellency: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your excellency’s note of December 7, 1916,1 stating that you have been informed by your Government that the Entente powers have decided upon a blockade of Greece, effective on and after the 8th day of December at 8 a. m., a period of 48 hours being allowed to vessels of third powers to depart from Greek harbors.

I have the honor, with reference to this statement, to inform you that inasmuch as this Government has been informed by the Greek Government that peaceful relations subsist between Greece and the Allies, the Government of the United States adheres to its traditional position which has heretofore been set forth in relation to the Cretan blockade of 1897, and the Venezuelan blockade of 1902, that the United States does not concede the right of a foreign power to interfere with the commercial rights of uninterested countries by the establishment of a blockade in the absence of a state of war, and therefore reserves the consideration of all international rights and [Page 106] of any question which may in any way affect the commercial interests of the United States.

The United States, therefore, does not acquiesce in any extending of the doctrine of pacific blockade which may adversely affect the rights of states not parties to the controversy or discriminating against the commerce of neutral nations; and my Government reserves all of its rights in the premises.

Accept [etc.]

Robert Lansing
  1. Ante, p. 80.