File No. No. 763.72113A/359
The Secretary of State to Messrs. Kenefick, Cooke, Mitchell & Bass, Buffalo, N. Y.
Gentlemen: The Department acknowledges the receipt of your letter of May 27, 1918,1 giving further information regarding funds held in Germany to the credit of certain of your clients. You assume that as a practical proposition nothing can be done toward securing possession of these funds until after the termination of the war with Germany, but add that you would be glad to receive any suggestions from the Department as to the possibility or advisability of making effort to secure these funds through the War Trade Board or through any other channel. It appears that you seek to have withdrawn from a bank in Berlin by transfer to the United States deposits amounting to about $40,000, held in Germany to the credit of your clients in Buffalo.
In reply the Department may state for your information that it is a general practice of belligerents not to permit any steps to be taken which would be regarded as increasing the resources of the enemy, and that, accordingly, in the present European war, both before and since the United States became a belligerent, the withdrawal of enemy deposits has been generally prohibited by the belligerents. Belligerent governments, as a concession, however, during the present war have at times permitted indigent and interned enemy aliens to draw on their bank deposits in small amounts from time to time. Private bank deposits, while detained or sequestrated until the close of hostilities, have not as a rule been confiscated. With respect to the practice of nations in time of war of limiting and [Page 432] prohibiting transactions between their subjects and those of an enemy, and particularly transactions involving the withdrawal of enemy funds, thereby increasing the resources of the enemy to that extent, you are referred to the following authorities: Wheaton’s International Law (Phillipson), fifth English edition, page 438; Halleck’s International Law, volume 1, fourth edition, page 581; Lawrence’s Principles of International Law, fourth edition, page 357; International Law, Oppenheim, volume 2, page 112.
In the present case, however, the Enemy Trading Act is controlling and the Department has no objection to your taking the matter up with the War Trade Board with a view to obtaining its opinion in the matter.
I am [etc.]
Second Assistant Secretary
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