Office of the Historian

841.711/1589½

The Secretary of State to President Wilson

Washington, November 14, 1916.

My Dear Mr. President: I perceive by your note of today in reply to my letter of October 17th, in relation to the interception of the mails by the Allied Powers, that you misconceived the purpose of the memorandum which I enclosed in my letter. I am afraid I did not make my purpose clear.

I did not intend the memorandum as a draft of reply but merely as a discussion of the subject for the purpose of settling in our own minds the policy which we should adopt in continuing the controversy and in accordance with which we should prepare a reply. It was intended to analyze the arguments on both sides and to find, if possible, a solution to a dispute over apparently irreconcilable rights.

In sending you the letter and the memorandum I sought to obtain your views as to the analysis of the subject in the memorandum and as to whether the course of action suggested in my letter seemed to you to offer a practical solution of the problem, which we could adopt and incorporate in proper form in a note in reply to the British note of October 12th.13 For that reason I did not refer to the British note in the memorandum, dealing with the subject abstractly rather than concretely, and, furthermore I did not send you a copy of their note.

I am enclosing a copy of the note now and you will perceive that there are statements and conclusions set forth which we ought not let go unchallenged. So that, if you approve of the analysis in my memorandum and of the policy outlined in my letter, we will use them as general guides in drafting our reply while traversing as far as seems necessary the arguments advanced by Viscount Grey.

I am returning my letter and memorandum to you for consideration in the light of this explanation and I shall await your instructions as to the adoption of the policy proposed and the preparation of a reply, which will of course be submitted to you when drafted.

Faithfully yours,

Robert Lansing
  1. See note No. 307 from the British Ambassador, Foreign Relations, 1916, supp., p. 629.↩