File No. 763.72111/4443
I should be very much obliged to you for an appointment as soon as
you have been able to study a translation of the enclosed memorandum
and are prepared to discuss it with me.
I further beg to enclose a cipher message for the Foreign Office in
Berlin,1 which
refers to the above-mentioned question and to your note of December
18 last concerning peace terms.2 I should be very grateful for kind
transmission to Berlin.
[Enclosure—Translation]
Memorandum of the German Government Concerning
Defensively Armed Enemy Merchant Ships
The German Government, in its memorandum of February 8,
1916,3
respecting the treatment of armed merchant ships, adduced a
number of arguments for no longer considering merchantmen armed
by enemy powers as peaceful vessels of commerce but regarding
them as belligerents. Evidence in support of its position has
largely increased since that time.
As may be seen from numerous press reports and parliamentary
proceedings in enemy countries the number of merchant ships
armed with heavy guns has grown considerably larger in the
course of the year 1916. The limit of the evolution was placed
by responsible statesmen, of those countries, such, as Lord
Crewe and Admiral Lacaze, at the arming of all merchant
vessels. More particulars will be found in the enclosed
resolutions of a conference held at London on December 10, by
shipping interests with the assistance of Government
representatives. Public opinion in enemy countries has long
demanded that guns be mounted at the bow of merchant ships also;
as a matter of fact, the use of bow guns has already been
established by German naval craft in the Mediterranean.
That the armament of merchant vessels is not intended for defense
only but for attack on the German submarines engaged in cruiser
warfare is shown by a number of indisputable facts. The secret
order of the British Government published with the German
memorandum of February 8, 1916, may be here called to mind. In
the meanwhile secret admiralty orders, which fully confirm their
aggressive character, found on French and Italian merchant
vessels, fell into the hands of the German naval forces that
captured them. Thus were found on the French merchant vessel Marie Thérèse on October
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29 of this year, confidential
instructions of the French Naval Staff, in which the following
order is given, among others:
[In French] Open fire as soon as the submarine is within
range.
Like directions are given in the secret instructions found on the
S. S. Citta di Messina on July 31 of last
year:
[In Italian] If a vessel sights a submarine forward and
quite near, either below or in the act of coming to the
surface, the best maneuver to make is resolutely to
steer for it. By so doing it will either strike the
submarine and sink it or at least, as has happened in
previous cases, kill all or a part of the crew by
hurling them against the sides; or it will compel the
submarine to submerge and come up abaft, which is a very
advantageous position for it. Thereafter it will be
necessary to keep close watch astern and to flee at full
speed, trying to keep the submarine directly astern if
the sea is smooth or not sufficiently rough to prevent
the submarine from firing to good effect, if taken in
front.
In addition the British Government offered through Lord
Crewe, on November 15 of last year, in
the House of Lords the following explanation of the orders
issued by it, which excludes every doubt:
[In English] The German submarine is an enemy which it is
permissible and proper to destroy, if you can, at
sight.
This aggressive intent of enemy merchant vessels has become
clearly apparent to the German naval authorities. Cases of
merchant vessels which, without even being attacked, assume an
aggressive attitude toward German submarines, are increasing.
Evidence of the carrying out of secret orders has recently been
produced; thus the French steamer Mississippi on November 8 of this year opened
artillery fire on a German submarine passing by a long way off
that had made no move whatever to attack and even had never
intended to stop her; likewise, on December 4 of this year, the
armed English steamer Caledonia attempted
to ram a German submarine although here again there had been no
intention, let alone any preparation, to attack on the part of
the Germans; again in November, in the English Channel alone,
there were recorded three attacks with artillery by-unknown
enemy steamers on German submarines which had not made the
slightest move against the steamers, while six such occurrences
took place in the Mediterranean in the past few months.
In this condition of things enemy merchant ships can not in
particular cases claim treatment according to the rules of
ordinary cruiser warfare; they have rather assumed the character
of belligerents under the principles announced by the Government
of the United States in its memorandum of March 25, 1916,
concerning the status of armed merchant vessels.1
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The American Government proceeds from the principle that the
vessel in neutral waters, as well as on the high seas, is to be
regarded and treated as a warship when, among other things, it
is under commission or orders of a belligerent state to engage
in attacks. To be sure the American Government presupposes that
the character of a belligerent on the high seas is not
established on presumption alone but only on conclusive
evidence; this conclusive evidence, however, is so abundant that
it leaves no room for doubt. While the American memorandum lays
stress on the point that the presence of armament on a merchant
vessel does not by itself afford sufficient ground for presuming
her to be a war vessel, the German Government ventures to point
out that the belligerent character of the enemy merchant vessels
now armed is denoted by other weighty circumstances besides the
armament itself, among which the above cited instructions of the
enemy governments and the actual attacks unexpectedly delivered
on German submarines stand foremost.
Further, the American memorandum only considers government
commissions to attack as existing when they are attended with a
threat to punish failure to attack and with a grant of prize
money when the attack is made. Here again the presumptions are
proved to exist. For captains who failed to carry out their
orders to sink German U-boats, although opportunity offered to
do so, are punished in England. The Daily
Chronicle reports, as early as the 8th of September,
1915, that Ernest Alfred Sheldon, of the
Royal Naval Reserve, captain of an armed merchant ship, was
dismissed from the Navy by a sentence of the court martial at
Devonport for not attacking a German U-boat. It is further
known, from the proceedings of the English Parliament, that for
the sinking of, or effort to sink, German submarines not only
have rewards been offered by the state, but that claims for such
rewards have been examined by government organs and that the
reward is given only when the said examination proves
satisfactory to the government. Rewards are granted in various
forms; they consist mainly of money, therefore resembling prize
money, or again in awarding a gold watch or conferring
distinction in the granting of a military officer’s rank. To all
this is added that the men detailed from the English Navy or
Naval Reserve to man the guns on English merchant vessels, on
which they are regularly placed, do not lose their military
character and their subjection to the disciplinary and punitive
power of the naval authorities through being under orders on a
merchant vessel, and so they are, as before, part of the British
naval forces. Ships so armed, manned, and directed are no
longer, as the American memorandum requires them to be in order
to have their peaceful character recognized, simply armed for
self-defense; they rather render, in the
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manner they are instructed to do, the same
services against German submarines as the war vessels detailed
for antisubmarine service, and the circumstance that they are at
the same time doing commercial service does not make any
difference as to their being treated like belligerents by German
submarines.
Finally, the American memorandum goes on to say that a warship
may properly exercise force to compel a merchant vessel to
surrender, if the merchant vessel either offers resistance after
a summons or, before the summons, uses its armament to keep the
enemy at a distance. It admits, in this connection, the merchant
vessel’s right to resort to self-defense as soon as it is
certain of attack by an enemy warship, as otherwise the exercise
of the right would be so restricted as to be made ineffectual;
exactly the same grounds support the position that a warship
that is entitled to exercise the right of capture may use force
when certain of attack by an armed enemy merchant vessel.
The German Government has drawn from the evidence herein above
communicated the conclusion, in accord with the American
memorandum, that armed merchant vessels of its adversaries in
this war are to be treated as belligerents. In this it is fully
convinced that it is acting on the same grounds as the American
Government took in Secretary Lansing’s note of January 18, 1916, to the
English Ambassador;1 for in that note the
American Government concurs in the view that under the present
conditions of U-boat warfare any armament of a merchant ship
appears to have the character of armament for aggression, for
the mounting of large guns on merchant ships could only be
explained by an intention to place the merchant vessel at an
advantage over the U-boat and thereby prevent warning and
searching by the latter.
