740.00112 Navicert/31
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Under Secretary of State (Welles)
The British Ambassador called this afternoon at his request. The Ambassador referred to the question of navicerts. He said he was afraid that there was a lack of comprehension in the Department of State as to what the navicerts really were. He said he had explained the matter fully to Assistant Secretary Grady and that the Counselor of his Embassy18 had had a conversation on the same subject yesterday with Mr. Moffat19 but that he felt there was misinterpretation on the part of the authorities of this Government as to the system involved by the issuance of navicerts. The Ambassador said that the creation of this system during the present war was due to the initiative taken by the Secretary of State himself20 who had suggested to the Ambassador in the early days of the war that such a system be created by the British authorities and had termed the documents to be issued by the British authorities in the United States as “letters of assurance”. The Ambassador felt that this title might have been preferable, but said that the system itself was only that proposed by Secretary Hull. He wished to make it clear, he stated, that the issuance of navicerts within the territory of the United States implied no exercise of sovereignty on the part of the British authorities since the exercise of sovereignty by Great Britain only occurred when American flag vessels were taken [Page 14] by British warships to British ports for inspection. That, he said, was the control and not the issuance of navicerts. He reiterated that the application for navicerts was entirely voluntary and that no American shipowners nor exporters needed to apply for navicerts, but that of course if they did not, the ships carrying cargoes which were not navicerted were liable to diversion from their course by British war vessels to a British port, which from now on, in the case of United States flag vessels, would be St. Johns, Newfoundland. He said the sole purpose of the system was to avoid inconvenience and undue delay to American exporters and to American vessels and that he trusted this aspect of the situation would be clearly apprehended by the United States authorities. I said to the Ambassador that Mr. Moffat had sent me a memorandum21 of his conversation with the Counselor of the British Embassy yesterday but that I had not yet had an opportunity of studying it. I felt, I said, that the subject was one of considerable complexity and of very great importance and I did not want to give him any final impression with regard to what he had just said until I had had an opportunity of consulting with the Secretary of State and with the appropriate officials of this Department.
- Nevile Butler.↩
- Chief of the Division of European Affairs.↩
- See memorandum by the Secretary of State, September 4, 1939, Foreign Relations, 1939, Vol. i, p. 718.↩
- Not printed.↩