File No. 841.801/113
The British Ambassador ( Spring Rice) to the Secretary of State
Sir: I have the honour to refer to my note No. 203 of the 16th instant regarding the use of the words “danger area” in the recent British proclamations respecting the mine fields in the North Sea.
I have now received instructions from His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to inform you that the term “mined area” will be used in such proclamations in the future.
I have [etc.]
[For the report by Admiral Benson, as one of the accomplishments of the Naval delegation to the inter-Allied conference at Paris, November 29–December 3, 1917, of “(c) A joint decision to undertake with the British the closing of the North Sea by establishing and maintaining a mine barrage,”2 see Foreign Relations, 1917, Supplement 2, volume I, page 384.]
- An account of American participation in the planning and laying of this barrage is given in The Northern Barrage and Other Mining Activities; memoranda relating to the project and operations are comprised in The American Naval Planning Section in London. (Publications No. 2 and No. 7, respectively, of the Navy Department, Historical Section, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1920, 1923.)↩