File No. 763.72111So4/75

The Secretary of State to Representative J. A. Elston

Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 22d instant enclosing a copy of a communication signed by residents of Oakland, California, requesting that certain members of the French Army Flying Corps, who recently arrived at New York on the S. S. Rotterdam, be interned “in accordance with the universally accepted canons of international law governing neutrality.”1

[Page 702]

In reply you are informed that after earnest consideration the Department arrived at the conclusion that the presence of these gentlemen in the United States was not a violation of its neutrality in view of the circumstance, among others, as known and understood by the Department, that they arrived voluntarily upon a furlough merely for the purpose of visiting friends and relatives.

I have [etc.]

Robert Lansing
  1. Not printed.