File No. 711.5914/83a
The Acting Secretary of State to the President
Washington, August 7, 1916.
The President: The undersigned, the Acting Secretary of State, has the honor to lay before the President, with a view to its transmission to the Senate, if his judgment approve thereof, to receive the advice and consent of that body to its ratification, a convention between the United States and Denmark respecting the cession of the Danish West Indian Islands to the United States, signed at New York on August 4, 1916.
The undersigned has also the honor to submit, for the information of the Senate, a declaration made by the Secretary of State at the [Page 646] time of the signing of the convention “that the Government of the United States of America will not object to the Danish Government extending their political and economic interests to the whole of Greenland.”
As the Danish Government has requested that publicity of the terms of the convention be withheld until such time as the two Governments shall agree to promulgate them, the undersigned begs to suggest that it be recommended to the Senate that in giving its advice and consent to the ratification of the convention, its resolution include a provision that the injunction of secrecy shall remain on the convention until the two Governments shall agree to make it public.
Respectfully submitted.