865.4016/85: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Italy (Phillips)
110. Your 306, October 17, 1938. You are requested to address the following note to the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
“I have been instructed by my Government to express its disappointment that Your Excellency’s note of October 17, 1938 does not convey the assurances which it felt confident would be received concerning non-discriminatory treatment in Italy of all Americans irrespective of race or creed.
Your Excellency states that a special treatment accorded to American Jews would constitute an unjust discrimination with respect to other foreign Jews and would moreover be incompatible with the principles underlying the measures in question which are designed [Page 599] to safeguard the race and not to discriminate against special categories of foreigners according to the countries of which they are nationals. My Government had taken for granted that the decree laws referred to in my note of October 4, 1938 apply to foreign Jews of all nations. Hence, obviously it was not the intention of my Government to raise the question of treatment of American Jews as compared with the Jews of other countries.
What concerns the Government of the United States are the provisions of the decree-laws in reference, which divide arbitrarily American nationals into special classes and subject them to differential treatment on the basis of such classification. It is one of the fundamental principles of my Government to make no distinction between different classes of American nationals on the basis of race or creed, and uniformly in its relations with foreign nations it has emphatically declined to recognize the right of those nations to apply on their part such discrimination as between American nationals. This principle, furthermore, is applied by my Government to nationals of foreign countries residing in the United States, including Italians. The application to American nationals of the measures referred to would be incompatible with this principle in that it would have the effect of dividing them into two broad classes, namely Jewish and non-Jewish, and would accord to the former differential treatment of an unusual character with respect to establishment and sojourn.
Considering the foregoing, my Government finds itself under the necessity of maintaining a watchful attitude with regard to developments in connection with the application of provisions of the nature of those embodied in the decree-laws referred to above in so far as they may affect American nationals.”
Please cable when note is delivered.