031 Byrd South Polar Expedition/166
The British Ambassador (Lindsay) to the Secretary of State
Sir: With reference to the letter which you were so good as to address to me on November 14th last, I have the honour, under instructions from His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, at the instance of His Majesty’s Government in New Zealand to inform you that the supposition that the British claim to sovereignty over the Ross Dependency is based on discovery alone, and, moreover, on the discovery of only a portion of the region, is based on a misapprehension of the facts of the situation.
- 2.
- The Dependency was established and placed under New Zealand Administration by an Order in Council of 192314 in which the Dependency’s geographical limits were precisely defined. Regulations have been made by the Governor General of New Zealand in respect of the Dependency and the British title has been kept up by the exercise in respect of the Dependency of administrative and governmental powers, e. g. as regards the issue of whaling licences and the appointment of a special officer to act as magistrate for the Dependency.
- 3.
- As I had the honour to state in my Note No. 33 of January 29th last, His Majesty’s Government in New Zealand recognize the absence of ordinary postal facilities in the Dependency and desire therefore to facilitate as far as possible the carriage of mail by United States authorities to and from the Byrd Expedition. As regards Mr. Anderson’s present mission, they understand that he is carrying letters to which are, or will be, affixed special stamps printed in the United States and that these stamps are to be cancelled and date-stamped on board the Expedition’s vessel. They also understand that these stamps are intended to be commemorative of the Byrd Expedition and have been issued as a matter of philatelic interest.
- 4.
- In the above circumstances His Majesty’s Government in New Zealand have no objection to the proposed visit of Mr. Anderson. They must, however, place it on record that, had his mission appeared to them to be designed as an assertion of United States sovereignty [Page 1014] over any part of the Ross Dependency or as a challenge to British sovereignty therein, they would have been compelled to make a protest.
I have [etc.]
- The New Zealand Official Year-Book, 1924 (Wellington, N. Z.: W. A. G. Skinner, Government Printer 1923), pp. 724–725.↩