740.00111A.R./933a: Telegram

The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Brazil (Caffery)

12. For Professor Fenwick. The Foreign Minister of Venezuela has communicated to me through his Ambassador in Washington18 a portion of the instructions given to Dr. Gustavo Herrera, representative of Venezuela on the Neutrality Committee. The text is as follows:

“In the Neutrality Committee which will meet at Rio de Janeiro penalties must be considered for the violations of the safety zone defined in (1) of Declaration XV of the Inter-American Consultative Meeting at Panama, October 3, 1939.

The study of the penalties will involve an examination of the right of the neutrals to establish them for acts consummated on the high seas and a definition of the hostile acts which constitute violations of the safety zone.

With respect to these two questions the opinion of this Department is the following:

1. The definition of an extent of the open sea as a safety zone is an act without precedent in international law. It indicates a practical tendency toward the neutralization to the benefit of trade and of humanity of certain areas where naval operations are not essential for the accomplishment of the war aims of the belligerents.

The neutralization of such maritime areas has been imposed on the neutrals by practices likewise without precedent in maritime warfare [Page 265] which have refused to recognize and have violated the rights of the neutrals.

An unprecedented practice is the declaration of war zones which embrace large areas of the high seas. This practice of prohibiting to neutral vessels the navigation of certain strategic areas arbitrarily determined by the belligerents has since the Russo-Japanese War attained an indefinite extension.

An unusual and unprecedented practice is the use, without any limitation or control, of submarine mines which circulate freely at the will of currents and imperil the life and property of neutrals over large maritime areas.

It is an unprecedented practice to subject neutral vessels sailing in indeterminate regions fixed by the belligerents to immediate destruction without compliance with any of the duties imposed by the international rules of naval warfare, of verifying the hostile character of the vessel and of saving the lives of passengers and crew.

Unusual and unprecedented is the extension of the lists of contraband and the interpretation of the doctrine of the continuous voyage.

These practices modify exclusively to the advantage of the military and economic aims pursued by the belligerents the best defined principles and universal rules of international law. In view of these conditions of maritime warfare, it is reasonable that the neutrals should reserve in the part of the seas contiguous to the American continent a zone in which the duties of humanity and the international rules of maritime warfare may be observed and peaceful navigation be carried on without dangers to life and property.

2. The acts from which belligerents must refrain in the safety zone are described in the Preamble as ‘actividades bélicas’ (warlike activities) (Par. 2), ‘actos de hostilidad’ (acts of hostility) (Par. 5), ‘acta hostil (hostile act) (Art. 1). This Department deems it fitting that the Neutrality Committeee interpret, define and give a precise sense to these expressions. It is evident that the Declaration did not have the purpose of including among warlike activities those which are purely defensive. This interpretation limits the warlike activities which violate the security of the zone to acts of aggression.

The penalty for these violations might be formulated as follows:

‘There shall not be admitted into the ports, roadsteads and internal waters of any American nation, aircraft or war or merchant vessels of any of the belligerents, guilty of an act of aggression or having given assistance to the aggressor within the zone defined in (1) of Declaration XV of the Inter-American Consultative Meeting, at Panama, October 3, 1939.’”

I have expressed my general belief that the question of the penalties to be imposed as indicated in the last paragraph of this document is a question which should be considered in full and very careful detail by the Committee before any final decision is taken by the Governments of the American Republics.

Hull
  1. In note of January 12, 1940, from the Venezuelan Ambassador, Diógenes Escalante, to the Under Secretary of State. The instructions, in Spanish, are dated January 9.