740.00111A.R.–N.C./86: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Brazil (Caffery)
107. Your 165, April 17, 9 a.m. For Fenwick. I doubt the feasibility of segregating mail under a guarantee to belligerents that it contains no contraband for the reasons, among others, first, that it would amount in effect to the censoring of mail by neutral countries which I do not believe that this Government would desire to undertake, second, it seems very questionable whether belligerent governments would be willing to accept such a guarantee and grant immunity to the mail thus segregated, third, any arrangement of this sort would, however carefully safeguarded, constitute an implied admission of the legality of censorship by the belligerents of all classes of mail and place neutral governments in the position of cooperating with the belligerents. The Post Office Department concurs in our view that such an arrangement would be inadvisable and difficult to carry out.
The Department’s present position is that Article I of Eleventh Hague Convention of 190761 is applicable to correspondence on the high seas as well as to correspondence forcibly taken into port, but that it does not have application to correspondence coming normally within the jurisdiction of a belligerent government. It has also taken the position that official correspondence passing between this Government and its representatives abroad, as well as between those representatives, should not be subjected to censorship. Parcels post are, of course, in the same category as freight shipments of merchandise.