300.115(39) City of Flint/24: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Steinhardt)
211. Department’s 208, October 24, 6 p.m., regarding City of Flint. Although the Department is still without essential facts regarding the seizure and the reasons for entering a Soviet port, it is thought that the following information may be helpful to you in any discussion of the subject with the Soviet Government should that Government seem inclined to justify detention of the vessel.
Article 23 of Hague Convention No. XIII of 1907 provides, in effect, that a neutral power may allow prizes to enter its ports when they are brought in for sequestration pending decision of a prize court. The United States, Great Britain, Japan and Siam made reservations with respect to this article. It was entirely excluded by the United States as not representing international law. Germany is a party to the convention and did not reserve as to Article 23. The Soviet Government probably does not consider that it is a party since the convention was not ratified by it but by the former government of Russia, and since it has not indicated its acceptance of the convention. It might, however, contend that since Germany is a party to the convention and is invoking the article, the Soviet Government can arbitrarily give it application in this case. As to any such argument you should say (1) that the United States did not accept the article because it did not consider that it conformed to international law; and that by applying the article the neutral might become involved in participation in the war to the extent of giving asylum to a prize where the belligerent might not be able to conduct it to a home port. According to the Department’s understanding these were the reasons why the other powers mentioned declined to accept the article; (2) that quite apart from the convention, the harboring of a prize is distinctly unneutral, regardless of any action which the Prize Court of the capturing country may take with respect to a vessel not within its jurisdiction; (3) that this question was clearly at issue in the case of the steamship Appam75 which was brought into an American port by a German cruiser in February 1916; that the German Government requested this Government to intern the vessel during the period of the war but the request was denied. The ship’s crew was set at liberty but the prize crew was detained. In its communication to the German Embassy the Department stated that the vessel was entitled “only to the privileges usually granted by maritime nations [Page 988] to prizes of war, namely to enter neutral ports only in case of stress of weather, want of fuel and provisions, or necessity of repairs,” and that such prizes were required to leave “as soon as the cause of their entry has been removed.”
The Supreme Court in passing upon the case76 held that the bringing of the prize into our port was a violation of our neutrality, that is to say, it involved an undertaking to make of an American port a depository of captured vessels; that if such were not contrary to international law “our ports might be filled in case of a general war such as is now in progress between the European countries, with captured prizes of one or the other of the belligerents, in utter violation of the principles of neutral obligation which have controlled this country from the beginning.” The vessel was restored to the private owners.
In March 1915 a German cruiser took a French vessel into a Chilean port as a prize of war where it was held for 8 days. The Government of Chile protested against the action as a violation of its neutrality, an offense against its sovereignty, and contrary to Article 21 of the thirteenth Hague Convention. A similar protest was made against the conduct of German men-of-war in bringing into Chilean ports three other vessels and holding them there for a period of 7 days. The action was denounced as a flagrant violation of the neutrality of Chile.
(4) Finally, you should conclude, if occasion arises, that it is the decided view of your Government that international law does not permit a neutral country to receive in its ports prizes of war except for the reasons stated in Article 21 of the Hague Convention; that if the prize does not depart when the cause of its entry is removed, the neutral government must permit it with its crew to depart, and that your Government does not doubt that the Soviet Government will view the matter in this light and act accordingly.
- For correspondence on the treatment of the Appam as a prize ship in an American port, see Foreign Relations, 1916, Supplement, pp. 722 ff.↩
- March 6, 1917; 243 U. S. 124.↩