File No. 711.6521/109
The Italian Ambassador to the Secretary of State
Beverly Farms, Mass., June 29, 1916.
Mr. Secretary of State: Your excellency was pleased to send me in your courteous note of March 29 last the text of a direct communication [Page 21] to the Ambassador of the United States at Rome dated the 23d [25th] of that month relative to the notice previously given in the name of the American Government to terminate the Italo-American Consular Convention of May 8, 1878. In that communication your excellency stated that the earlier denouncement was to be understood to be limited in the intention of the American Government to Articles 13 and 11 only of the Convention and, for the last named Article, the Treaty of February 24, 1881, whose one article superseded that very Article 11.
Your excellency will certainly have now heard from the Embassy of the United States at Rome that the King’s Government has taken formal note of that communication by which it stands understood that from the 1st of July of this year just the 13th and 11th articles of the Italo-American Consular Convention of May 8, 1878, and for the last named Article, the Italo-American Treaty of February 24, 1881, are abrogated.
At the same time, I have, in pursuance of instructions received, the honor to notify your excellency that the King’s Government denounces as of July 1 next, the whole Italo-American Convention of May 8, 1878, which, as provided by its Article 18, will remain in force for one year’s time until July 1, 1917.
I shall therefore be thankful to your excellency if you will please make formal acknowledgment to me of the denouncement by the King’s Government through me as of the 1st of July next of the whole Italo-American Consular Convention, the said denouncement maturing on the 1st of July 1917.
I take [etc.]