File No. 837.711/36
The Secretary of State to the Minister in Cuba ( Gonzales)
Your telegram June 4, 10 a.m. There does not appear to be any necessity for making reply to the inquiry from the Mexican Post Office Department in view of fact that Mexico has withdrawn her diplomatic representative from Cuba for the reasons given in the official announcement of the Mexican Minister for Foreign Affairs.1 However, should Cuban Post Office Department deem it necessary to make reply a simple acknowledgment would seem all that was required.
As regards the question of right of search of neutral mails passing through belligerent territory, it may be said that it must be recognized that mails are extensively used for the transmission of merchandise. Merchandise may be properly defined to include money, evidences of indebtedness, etc., comprehending money orders, checks, drafts, notes, and other negotiable instruments, stocks, bonds, coupons, and other similar securities. Mails may thus be used to transmit contraband of war directly or indirectly to or from an enemy country, also for the transmittal of hostile despatches either to or from, directly or indirectly, an enemy country. There is no doubt that military information has been and is being sent to and from Germany directly and through neutral countries contiguous to the belligerents. If, therefore, a belligerent has a right to prevent the transmission of contraband to the enemy and hostile despatches to or from the enemy, there is ample ground for the inspection by one [Page 1740] belligerent of mails passing between neutral countries in this hemisphere and Germany or countries contiguous to Germany so long as those neutral countries do not take steps to keep contraband and noxious despatches out of Government mails. In view of the foregoing there can be no objection in principle to the censorship of mails, but there may be objection, first, as to the method used, such as dilatory tactics, excessive detention of vessels, etc., and, second, to the abuses of the exercise of censorship such as the detention of innocent articles, personal letters, etc. If you should deem it necessary to make use of the foregoing, you may informally and unofficially present them not as views of this Government but as grounds upon which a practice of censoring mails may perhaps be justified.