740.00111A.R.–N.C./109
The British Embassy to the Department of State
Aide-mémoire
His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom have had under consideration the Recommendation relative to Internment recently submitted to the Governments of the American Republics by the Inter-American Neutrality Committee.88 They wish to make the following three observations on the subject of this Recommendation:
- (1)
- As it at present stands Article 1 of the Resolutions attached to the Recommendation would oblige all parties adopting it to intern all members of the armed forces of belligerent powers, whatever might be the occasion for their presence in the territory of the country concerned. This obligation goes beyond the requirements of International Law and in the opinion of His Majesty’s Government appears to establish an inconvenient and undesirable precedent;
- (2)
- Article 4 of the Resolutions, providing that “belligerents who are victims of wrecks or accidents arriving in neutral territory shall be interned”, also goes beyond the ordinary principles of international law under which, in the view of His Majesty’s Government, persons need not normally be interned if they are brought in on neutral merchantmen or if they swim ashore;
- (3)
- Article 8 of the Resolutions, in seeking to prevent internment from involving a neutral in financial loss, appears to His Majesty’s Government to overlook the fact that internment is primarily a duty owed to the opposing belligerents to prevent internees from taking further part in the war and that the paramount consideration in fixing the place and conditions of internment should be to ensure their safe custody. In consequence it would seem that only such private activities should be permitted to an internee as are compatible with his strict detention.
His Majesty’s Embassy has been instructed to bring the foregoing observations to the notice of the State Department and to request that they may receive the consideration of the competent authorities of the United States Government.
- Printed in Special Handbook prepared by the Pan American Union, Appendix A, pp. 28 ff.↩