811.114/1520
The Portuguese Legation to the Department of State
Memorandum
The Legation of Portugal did not fail to transmit to the Foreign Office at Lisbon the Department of State’s communication announcing that a recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States would make it in future unlawful for foreign commercial vessels to carry within American territorial waters alcoholic liquors.
Instructions have now been received from the Portuguese Government enjoining the Legation to call the attention of the Department of State to the serious inconvenience that the unqualified enforcement of such a provision would entail through the conflict it would establish with the national regulations governing conditions on board Portuguese mercantile vessels.
The hope is expressed that some means will be found to harmonize the requirements of existing American legislation with the underlying principle that, by common consent, has up to the present determined the legal status of commercial vessels in the territorial waters of foreign states.