340.1115A/100: Telegram
The Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Kennedy) to the Secretary of State
[Received October 3—6:15 p.m.]
1912. Your 1131, September 30. We have been looking into the charges of alleged discrimination against American citizens on American vessels and we are inclined to believe that there is no basis for this accusation.
It has been the policy of this Embassy and of the United States Lines throughout the present crisis to give preference to American citizens on all vessels leaving United Kingdom ports. Some aliens have sailed, it is true, but generally speaking they were special cases or the accommodations involved were not desired by citizens.
Of the aliens who have secured passage on American vessels during the past 6 weeks some were members of families in which there were American citizens. In keeping with the Department’s traditional policy we have not resorted to the extreme of splitting families. Some had come from the United States and possessed reentry permits. Some were servants accompanying citizens. There were also several doctors and nurses required to look after infants and elderly and sick persons.
A number of aliens secured passage to America by taking space turned down by Americans. Even at the height of the demand for space there were generally a few accommodations which for one reason or another could not be sold to citizens. These were placed at the disposal of aliens and in the majority of instances accepted. This situation will, I believe, account for practically all of those aliens not falling in the classes previously enumerated.
The belief of some persons that their reservations were switched to others arises from the fact that, at the beginning of the emergency, all regular sailings were cancelled and ticket holders were ordered to rebook. This was done for two reasons. One was that, no semblance of a schedule could be maintained. The other was that the only way to fill each vessel to her capacity was to scrap all reservations and start over again. It sometimes happened that when a ticket holder came back to rebook he found that his particular cabin had been assigned to some one else. This might lead him to believe that some preference had been shown. He would of course be especially annoyed if the new holder of the space happened to be an alien.
We at the Embassy have done everything possible to reduce the flow of aliens to America. As you are aware quota immigration visas have not been issued since September 4, which has kept here more than 1000 aliens who would ordinarily have been traveling to America. Al though [Page 622] we have been under great pressure to intercede with the United States Lines on behalf of various individual aliens, we have interested ourselves only in the cases of Lord Beaverbrook, Madam Quo, the wife of the Chinese Ambassador to Great Britain, and Lady Nuffield. In each case there was a very urgent reason for our interest. The situation with regard to Madam Quo was that she was taking a sick child to America, while Lady Nuffield was ill and was being taken to America by her physician.
I doubt if there is anything to the charge of crookedness, at least so far as the personnel of the United States Lines with which we have any contact is concerned. It may be that an agent here and there would descend to accepting a bribe in return for preferential treatment, but we are strongly of the opinion that nothing of this sort exists among the staff of the line itself. Local officials are very disturbed by this charge and have promised to make an exhaustive investigation if we can supply details of any money that may have been paid over to an agent or to a member of the staff. I might say that of the 12,000 to 15,000 people who have passed through the Embassy thus far only one has complained of having to pay anyone for the privilege of purchasing a ticket. This charge did not involve an American line.
The man who made it moreover admitted that payment was made to a hotel porter and that he could not be sure the money went to any steamship line. Out of the thousands of persons who have been trying to get to America, some in a condition of near hysteria, it would be unnatural if some of them had not offered to pay more than the face value of a ticket. It would be even more unnatural if, here and there, an occasional offer had not been accepted. All in all, however, I am of the opinion that this charge of crookedness on the part of the ship line personnel will be very difficult to sustain. However, let’s have the specific charges. There is no sense in our trying to be specific in answering hazy insinuations.