File No. 656.119/352
I may add that the Minister of Foreign Affairs at The Hague returned
a more detailed answer in his note of yesterday to the British
Minister at The Hague who on March 22 addressed to him a note in the
name of the Associated Governments informing him of their decision
to proceed with the seizure.
[Enclosure—Translation]
Memorandum of the Netherland Ministry of
Foreign Affairs to the Department of State
The proclamation of the President of the United States of the
20th instant orders the seizure of all Netherland merchant
vessels lying in the ports of the United States.
A large number of those vessels, notably those laden with wheat
intended for the people of the Netherlands, had been detained in
American ports by the act of the American authorities
themselves; prevented by the said authorities from making their
voyage to the Netherlands, they had been chartered for
navigation between the United States and South America. Others
regularly called at American ports in consequence of their being
employed on direct lines maintaining communications between the
United States and the Netherland colonies in Asia and
America.
Seizure under those conditions is inconsistent with the
traditional friendship between America and the Netherlands and
with the good faith in which relations between states should
stand. Furthermore the seizure is in contravention of
international law which does not confer upon a sovereign state
the right to appropriate to its own use, even temporarily,
merchant vessels lying in its ports and flying the flag of a
state with which it is at peace. The so-called right of angary,
which is furthermore seriously questioned at the present time,
empowered a belligerent to take such action in cases where a
military operation demanded the immediate employment of neutral
merchant vessels lying in the belligerent’s ports. But that
right could not, in reason, be extended to cases of another
nature, notably that in which a belligerent in want of tonnage
desires to secure it through the wholesale seizure of merchant
vessels that do not belong to him.
The Netherland Government in its declaration published in the Official Gazette of March 30 showed the
extent to which the statement of facts contained in the
declaration annexed to the President’s proclamation of March 20
rests on inaccurate and incomplete information leading to the
false conclusion that the seizure of the Netherland vessels was
the necessary consequence of the temporization of the Netherland
Government under the influence of Germany whose attitude
deprived the Netherland Government of its freedom of action in
lending the requisite assistance towards the conclusion and
execution of an arrangement between the shipowners and the
Associated Governments.
This statement of the facts is altogether erroneous. The
Netherland Government held its full freedom of action with
respect to the Netherland vessels lying in ports of the United
States and its allies
[Page 1446]
and those vessels, save a few, had already been chartered;
some were even at sea. The fact that the free lane in the North
Sea is under Germany’s control only bore on the sending of
vessels to take the place of those leaving America for the
revictualing of the Netherlands and in the service of the
Commission for Relief. The regulating of vessels engaged in that
service does not come under the Queen’s Government, which gives
it its whole-hearted assistance, but under the arrangements made
by the two belligerent parties.
On the other hand the Netherland Government’s freedom of
action-was hampered by the Government of the United States
itself from the very beginning of the negotiations entered upon
with it. For in denying to the Netherland vessels the facilities
that are customary in international navigation, and in the Zeelandia case by refusing without any
valid ground clearance to that ship which already had its own
cargo, its own bunker coal, and therefore in no wise depended on
America, it exercised upon the Netherland Government a
constraint which was the prelude to the seizure that has just
been, carried into effect. The seizure is an act of violence
committed upon a friendly state whose flag the Government of the
United States was bound to respect. To meet this abuse of force
the Netherland Government has no other weapon than that of a
protest based on the justice of its cause. In the name of the
people of the Netherlands the Queen’s Government enters the most
energetic protest against the seizure of which their merchant
fleet is the victim. It reserves all its rights to full
reparation for the injuries resulting from that act of
violence.
The Hague,
March 31,
1918.
