150.071 Control/114
The German Embassy to the Department of State
St D. A. 48
The German Embassy has the honor to lay the following before the State Department.
[Page 946]Senate Bill No. 7, introduced by Senator King on the 9th instant and entitled “A bill to provide for the deportation of certain alien seamen, and for other purposes”, will be up for deliberation before the United States Senate on January 4 next, having already been discussed and approved in the proper Senatorial Committee.
A bill of similar purport, also introduced by Senator King occupied the attention of Congress before. At that time the German Government had introduced [instructed] the Embassy to call the attention of the United States Government to the fact that the enactment of the bill into law would have the effect of entailing an extraordinary burden upon German shipping interests.5 It has now repeated these instructions. The grave objections in this regard and which are known to the State Department should have all the more weight because the economic situation has meantime become much worse, so that all measures to this effect deserve especially earnest consideration.
The German Embassy therefore has the honor to urgently request the State Department to use its influence to the end that the bill may be given a thorough reexamination, especially since, so far as known, it recently left the Senate Committee without any hearings having been held on it.
While emphasizing the economic objections as above, the Embassy does not wish to omit pointing out how greatly material features of the bill in its opinion, deviate also from the rules that have hitherto obtained in international practice.