File No. 841.711/1229
The British Ambassador (Spring
Rice) to the Secretary of State
Washington,
September 20, 1916
.
[Received September
21.]
My Dear Mr. Secretary: You will no doubt have
noticed recent announcements in the press to the effect that His
Majesty’s Government were making use of information obtained from the
censorship for commercial purposes. I brought these accusations to the
attention of His Majesty’s Government by telegraph and I beg to
communicate to you, herewith, informally, the text of an interview which
was given on the 15th instant by Mr. Lloyd
George, Secretary of State for War, to the Associated
Press. A summary of this interview was published here a day or two ago,
but I feel that it would interest you to have the full text.
You will see that information obtained from the censorship is passed on
to the other departments of His Majesty’s Government for the sole
purpose of guiding the action of the Government in the conduct of the
war, and that it is warmly affirmed that the honest business interests
and trade secrets of American merchants or manufacturers are safe in the
hands of the military censors and of every Government department.
[Page 622]
Viscount Grey also informs me, in
a separate telegram, that the divulging of trade secrets which might
come to the knowledge of any person through the censor, would be an
offence under the Official Secrets Act punishable by imprisonment for
two years with or without hard labour and a fine.
Believe me [etc.]
For the Ambassador:
Colville Barclay
[Enclosure]
Interview given by the British Secretary of State for War (Lloyd
George) to the Associated
Press, September 15, 1916
There appears to be a deliberate campaign set on foot in the United
States by German agents to throw doubt on the good faith of His
Majesty’s Government in regard to the use of information obtained
through the censorship. These German agents, with whose underground
methods of working we are quite familiar, appear now to have
resurrected my statement in the House of Commons on August 8 about
the “palm kernel” letter, although that statement was fully
explained by Lord Robert
Cecil to the American Press on August 9, and the most
explicit assurances on the same subject were given by him in a later
interview on August 25. In spite of this these propagandists are
trying to dress out my statement as something new, nullifying Lord
Robert Cecil’s
assurances which followed it. Let me now say on behalf of the
military authorities what has already been said on behalf of the
Foreign Office, that when information is passed on by the censorship
to other departments, it is for the sole purpose of guiding the
action of the Government in the conduct of the war. For instance,
when we get information that an American firm to whom the Foreign
Office has given a permit for the export of certain German goods
from Rotterdam, on the ground that these goods had been paid for
before the war, is using that permit fraudulently, as has frequently
been the case, we pass the information on to the Foreign Office in
order that they may cancel the permit. Again, when we find that a
neutral firm is using British banking facilities for the purpose of
trading with our enemies and is deceiving the British bank in
question as to the real purpose of the transaction, we pass that
information on to the proper department, in order that they may
refuse to licence the transaction. Or again, if we learn that a
shipment of contraband, ostensibly from one neutral firm to another,
is really destined for the enemy, we see that the contraband
committee gets that information. That, frankly stated, is what we
do, but we affirm and we challenge any one to deny it, that the
honest business interests and trade secrets of an American merchant
or manufacturer are as safe in the hands of the military censors and
of every Government department here as they are in the hands of the
American Post Office.
