File No. 763.72114/3063
The Secretary of State to the Secretary of War ( Baker)
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of November 23, 1917, in which you outline the plans which the War Department is now contemplating with regard to the employment of prisoners of war and interned aliens in the United States.
In reply I have the honor to inform you that the Department of State concurs in the proposed plans referred to, in so far as they affect prisoners of war.
In the case of interned aliens, however, the Department hesitates to concur in the statement made in the last paragraph of section 4 to the effect that precedents for the proposed procedure exist in the principal nations engaged in the present war, for so far as the Department is aware, none of the belligerents in the present war has compelled interned aliens to do any work outside of the up-keep of their own camps.
While the foregoing reservation does not apply to the cases of the civil inhabitants of France, Belgium and Poland who have been deported in large numbers to Germany and there compelled to work in various industries and in the mines and fields, the Department does not consider it advisable that similar measures be applied to the German aliens interned in this country.
I have [etc.]