711.62119/102
The Commissioner at Berlin (Dresel) to the Secretary of State
[Received December 3.]
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of the Department’s mail instruction No. 2048, dated October 21, 1921, which was received in Berlin at 2 p.m. on the 10th instant. I immediately informed the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs that the President’s instrument of ratification of the Treaty between the United States and Germany signed at Berlin on August 25, 1921, together with full powers authorizing me to effect the exchange of ratifications, and a form of protocol had been received. The necessary steps were then undertaken to compare immediately the text of the American instrument with the German instrument. In this connection I regret to state that numerous slight errors in spelling and punctuation were discovered in the German text of the American document, but errors which offered no possibility of confusing the meaning.
It was hoped that the exchange of ratifications might be effected on the afternoon of the 10th, but owing to the fact that the German Chancellor, Dr. Wirth, was in conference with the Reparations Commission it was necessary to postpone the exchange until the following day.
A few minutes before the hour fixed for the exchange of ratifications on November 11th, the Foreign Office sent a representative to me to ask for an explanation of the reservations by the Senate which were included in the instrument. I at once replied that the terms of the Resolution with respect to participation of the United States in any agency or commission under the Treaty related merely to matters of domestic policy and procedure. The Foreign Office, however, requested that the exchange of ratifications be postponed long enough to permit a further consideration of the question by their legal experts. They raised no question, however, with regard to the second portion of the Resolution to the effect that the rights and advantages which the United States is entitled to have under the Treaty embrace the rights and advantages of nationals of the United States.
The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs called on me toward the end of this discussion and expressed his feeling that the question [Page 29] raised presented no serious difficulty and suggested the hour of half-past six in the afternoon of that day for the formal exchange of the documents.
Shortly before the hour determined upon, the Foreign Office inquired whether in the interests of what they considered greater clarity I would object to a slight verbal addition to the form of protocol, namely, the insertion of the words the wording of the Treaty so that the protocol would then read “and the ratifications of the Treaty aforesaid having been carefully compared and the wording of the Treaty found exactly conformable to each other.” I agreed to this slight modification, which does not seem to me open to objection, and at half-past six on the afternoon of the 11th in the Foreign Office I handed the American instrument of ratification to the German Chancellor, Dr. Wirth, and received from him the German instrument of ratification, dated November 2, 1921, signed by the President of Germany, Ebert, and countersigned by the German Chancellor, Dr. Wirth. A protocol of exchange was thereupon signed and sealed, in duplicate, by Dr. Wirth and myself. The two above-mentioned documents are transmitted herewith.22
On this occasion I expressed to Dr. Wirth my satisfaction that all formalities had now been completed and that a state of peace existed between the United States and Germany and my hope that this would continue and that friendly ties would increase in normal fashion. The Chancellor replied that he echoed my expressions with all his heart and in so saying he believed that he represented a deep feeling on the part of the German people.
I have [etc.]
- Enclosures not printed.↩