File No. 658.119/338
The Swedish Minister ( Ekengren) to the Secretary of State
[Received May 1.]
Excellency: In a note addressed to Your Excellency and dated the 24th of November last year,1 I had the honor to draw Your Excellency’s attention to the fact that the Swedish motorships Kronprins Gustaf Adolf and Pacific were refused [permission] to leave the United States without export license for certain amounts of bunker oil, which the vessels already had on board when arriving to this country, and referring to the Swedish-American treaty of 1783, article 17, according to which Swedish property is exempted from every kind of embargo or detention in the United States, and also to the treaty of 1827, article 12, according to which goods on board of a Swedish vessel in an American port, not unloaded there, does not come under the American customs regulations but is free to be carried further to any other country, I permitted myself respectfully and in consequence of instructions received from my Government, to ask for Your Excellency’s kind intervention in order that the said ships be allowed to proceed on their journey without further hindrance from the part of the United States authorities.
In that connection I also permitted myself to refer to the declaration of policy published by the Exports Administrative Board in The Official Bulletin of October 5 last year, which seems to clearly indicate that the regulations regarding coal for neutral vessels in American ports have no bearing on cases of the kind cited when no coal or other fuel is required from the United States.
In reply to the above note the then Acting Secretary of State under the date of January 242 of the current year declared that after careful consideration the conclusion was arrived at that the two articles of the treaties mentioned have no application to the delay caused to the two Swedish vessels in question and requested that the two vessels, as well as others in like cases, comply with the regulations of the United States Government for the control of commodities exported from or taken out of the jurisdiction of the United States.
In view of this answer, which tends to show that the State Department’s view on the subject is quite opposite to the one maintained by my Government, I permitted myself, under the date of January 30 last,2 to respectfully ask for an indication as to what interpretation the Department of State give to the articles cited by me in [Page 1225] the case. As I have, as yet, not been favored by a reply from Your Excellency in this respect, and as my Government would be highly obliged for being informed with regard to the opinion which the United States Government may hold in the matter, I venture herewith to ask Your Excellency to kindly let me know whether it would not be agreeable to the United States Government to kindly give the reasons for the apparent difference in the interpretation of the above treaty stipulations, which is manifested in the State Department’s above-mentioned note of the 24th of January last.
As a considerable time has elapsed since I first had the honor to submit this matter for Your Excellency’s kind consideration, I venture to express the hope that it may be convenient to give me an answer within the near future.1
With renewed assurances [etc.]