Office of the Historian

845.6363/19

The British Ambassador (Geddes) to the Secretary of State76

No. 380

His Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador presents his compliments to the Secretary of State and, with reference to a memorandum which Mr. Hughes was so good as to address to him on December 10th last,77 has the honour to state that His Majesty’s Government inform him that the regulations governing the exploitation of oil in India and Burma are being collected for communication to the United States Government in compliance with their request.

[Page 357]

Sir Auckland Geddes is, however, instructed to state that His Majesty’s Government do not consider that the request advanced by the United States Government for the communication of these regulations should be allowed any longer to delay the repudiation of the documents contained in Senate Document No. 272, Sixty-sixth Congress, Second Session,78 to which reference was made in the memorandum communicated by His Majesty’s Embassy on November 15th, 1921,79 and which by their form and phraseology are clearly the fabrication of an ignorant forger.

Washington , May 18, 1922.
  1. Left with the Secretary of State by the British Ambassador on May 25, 1922.↩
  2. Foreign Relations, 1921, vol. ii, p. 78.↩
  3. See letter from the Acting Secretary of State to President Wilson, May 14, 1920, and its enclosure, ibid., 1920, vol. i, p. 351.↩
  4. Ibid., 1921, vol. ii, p. 77.↩