File No. 763.72112/2738
The Ambassador in Great Britain (Page) to the Secretary of State
[Received July 23, 2 p. m.]
4600. Your 3552, July 21, 1 [8] p. m. just received.1 Sir Edward Grey is absent for a few days. I had already emphatically informed Cecil that the blacklisting of American firms is most irritating even to the Allies’ zealous friends in the United States, and is in fact no less offensive because it may possibly be legal. This policy is already causing the Government an avalanche of protests and much practical trouble at home and abroad.
The difficulty of rescinding the whole American list is that firms have been blacklisted in practically every Allied and neutral country in the world. But I shall on Monday make mitigating suggestions along the lines of your telegram. The British Government’s mistake is so gross and now so obvious that I have some hope of securing at least some leniency towards American firms.
[Page 413]Certain severe criticisms by American pro-Ally newspapers which have come here and may be read on the tape in clubs are yet suppressed from newspaper publication.
The origin of the world-wide black list, as nearly as I have found out, was in the ignorant zeal of academic advisers to the Government. So far as I know, no neutral government or diplomatic representative was consulted, and its purpose is to punish everybody who has traded with the Germans since the war began rather than to punish firms and companies in which Germans have an interest. Bankers are on the list who subscribed to the German war loan; but the gross inconsistency of the plan is illustrated by the omission of Kuhn Loeb because although they subscribed to the German loan they also subscribed to the Allies’ loan.