894.24/1029
Memorandum by the Chief of the Division of Controls (Green)
In the administration of the moral embargoes, it has been the uniform practice of the Department not to express objection to any proposed transaction to which the moral embargo, as publicly announced [Page 583] by the President11 and the Secretary, was not applicable. This practice was adopted after consultation among the officers of the Department concerned. It has been felt that to express objection to proposed transactions to which the moral embargoes were not applicable would necessarily lead to penalizing those companies which, on their own initiative, consulted the Department in regard to such transactions to the advantage of their competitors acting in equally good faith on the basis of the announced policy of the Department. Undoubtedly, this practice has resulted in a failure of the Department to make adverse comments on proposed transactions which, for one reason or another, we might have preferred to see dropped. Nevertheless in fairness to American companies, it has seemed wiser to adhere to it.12
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- See press release issued by the White House on December 2, 1939, Foreign Relations, Japan, 1931–1941, vol. ii, p. 202.↩
- on July 11 the Adviser on Political Relations (Hornbeck) noted that the embargo situation was becoming increasingly confused; that the embargoes should either be made more extensive or the “moral embargoes” dropped altogether, while placing the strictest construction upon the provisions of the law with respect to certain limited embargoes.↩