File No. 763.72119/10499a
The Secretary of State to the Ambassadors and Ministers in Belligerent Countries
In regard to the Department’s circular of December 18,1 containing the President’s note, please say to the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the government to which you are accredited that the Government of the United States sincerely hopes that the note will be considered as carrying none of the implications which have been attributed to it in the press and elsewhere, and as meaning nothing but what it plainly and in entire frankness expresses. Intimate also that what this Government ventures to suggest is that whatever reply is made, if the request of the note complied with, be made, not publicly, but in strict confidence; it being understood that the Government of the United States may in its turn convey it in like confidence to the governments of the other group of the belligerents, in order that it may in that way be ascertained without publicity whether there is any present ground or basis to hope for negotiations or conferences of any kind.