Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1917, Supplement 2, The World War, Volume II

File No. 841.3319/2

The Minister in Panama ( Price) to the Secretary of State

No. 1697

Panama, November 28, 1917.
[Received December 15.]

Sir: Referring to my confidential despatch No. 1496 of July 31 last, reporting the request of the British Government through their Minister here to the Government of Panama to be permitted to keep British warships in the neighborhood of Taboga Island, in the Bay of Panama, for longer periods than 24 hours, and enclosing a copy of a note from the Panaman Foreign Office expressing the hope that our Government would acquiesce in granting said request, I have the honor to enclose (enclosure No. 1) a copy of another note recently sent to the Panaman Foreign Office by Sir Claude Mallet, the British Minister in this Capital. A short time after the delivery of the note Secretary Garay promised to give me a copy but neglected to do so until now, same being obtained after another request made by me. He claims to have overlooked the matter and doubtless did.

About the time he told me of the receipt of the note, Sir Claude Mallet visited the Legation, showing me a letter from the British Embassy in Washington quoting the Assistant Secretary of State in the sense stated in his note which accompanies this. He wanted to know if I had heard from the Department and I answered him that I had not.

I made inquiry of Col. Chester Harding, Governor of the Panama Canal, as to whether he had had any response from the War Department relative to this matter. He replied that there had been no formal response but that he had been let know informally that the Department of War would be glad to have this courtesy extended to the British Government but that it was desired not to give an expression of this in any formal or written manner. I then consulted with …

Governor Harding and I both concluded after conferring, that it would be best to let Panama convey, in an unwritten and informal manner to the British Minister, its willingness to have the British Government exercise this privilege, in accordance with their expressed desire to permit them to have it, but for us not to give an expression regarding same in any formal or written way. I have followed this method in another informal talk with the Secretary of Foreign Affairs of Panama and I have acted upon the theory, in view of the Department failing to respond to my despatch of last July, that the procedure mentioned would be the one most acceptable to the Department.

I have [etc.]

Wm. Jennings Price

[Enclosure]

The British Minister in Panama ( Mallet) to the Panaman Secretary for Foreign Affairs ( Garay)

Panama, October 9, 1917.

Monsieur le Ministre: With reference to the pending inquiry as to whether the ruling that “hospitality extended in the waters of the Republic of Panama to a belligerent vessel of war …¹ shall serve to deprive such vessel of like hospitality in the Panama Canal Zone for a period of three months or vice versa” is an impediment to British warships entering the ports of the Republic of Panama now that the latter nation is a belligerent, I have the honor to state that according to a private opinion expressed recently by the Assistant Secretary of State at Washington to His Majesty’s Ambassador, the ruling in question, as far as the United States is concerned, is considered to be no longer in effect ipso facto from the moment the Republic of Panama became a belligerent.

In view of the foregoing, I take it for granted that there is no longer any objection on the part of the Government of Panama to British warships using the ports of the Republic, in case of necessity, for refitting and revictualling, notwithstanding that they may have entered a Canal Zone port within the period of three months.

I profit by this occasion to renew [etc.]

C. Mallet

1. Omission indicated on the original enclosure.