891.711/14
The Chargé in Iran (Merriam) to the Secretary of State
[Received July 7.]
Sir: I have the honor to refer to my despatch No. 795 of May 15, 1936 reporting developments in the situation created by the non-delivery in Iran of American second-class mail matter.
It is a pleasure to be able to inform the Department that a considerable number of deliveries has recently taken place of books, advertising matter, magazines of an innocuous type such as college alumni publications, and a very restricted number of magazines and newspapers of a general character which have evidently been opened and inspected.
The Legation, and more particularly the Consulate, have been bombarded with protests on this subject from Americans in Iran, particularly missionaries, who became somewhat acid at the withholding of their publications, but are now back on the alkaline side.
The Legation can lay no claim to the partial solution of this matter, in regard to which it has taken no official action aside from my inquiry of the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs on May [Page 380] 6th which was reported in despatch No. 795 of May 15, 1936. The Legation did not want to be in the position of requesting the release of the material only to have articles wounding to the Shah and to Iran broadcast throughout the country, and for this reason it has refrained from requesting instructions from the Department to this end. The whole matter was felt to be one of extreme delicacy and it is not surprising that subscribers, in large part missionaries living in remote stations who were and are unaware of exactly how delicate the situation is, should have become somewhat indignant and if they should feel, as I have no doubt they do, that the Legation has been unnecessarily weak about the whole thing.
A large number of protests has been lodged by missionaries and many other persons with post office and police officials, and it is the cumulative effect of these, it would seem, that has brought the Government to the point of sorting through the mail and delivering a portion of what was found to be non-objectionable.
It may be added for the Department’s information that I have twice had an opportunity to comb through a portion of the American newspaper file at the Foreign Office, and in each instance I have been greatly relieved to find no magazine clippings. This feeling stems from the fact that the magazine Time has handled the Djalal incident, the Iranian withdrawal, and the Ghods matter, with a thoroughgoing lack of tact and good taste. It is impossible for me to open my copy, which comes via London and is therefore not held up, without a feeling of apprehension.
It is to be hoped that the censor, in clearing American secondclass mail matter, will not clip magazine articles of this nature for distribution to the Government.
Respectfully yours,