File No. 867.48/473
The French Ambassador (Jusserand) to the Secretary of State
[Received November 28.]
Mr. Secretary of State: Confirming the intelligence which, owing to the urgency of the case, has already been given by telephone to the Department, I have the honor to inform your excellency that my Government has decided to grant free passage to the collier Caesar of the American Navy which is to carry supplies to the Syrians.
I am directed to point out to your excellency at the same time that it will be necessary to inform the Government of the Republic as early as possible of the date on which that ship is to arrive at our blockade lines, and also of the nature and exact quantity of supplies carried and of the port at which they will be landed.
The information will be telegraphed by us to Admiral de Spitz, who will make the necessary arrangements in the case with the [Page 940] American Consul at Alexandria, as was done in the case of the cruiser Des Moines which carried medicines to Palestine and took away members of the American colony.
As your excellency will understand, repeated relaxations of the blockade are not free from very serious inconvenience from the military standpoint. It will therefore be impossible for our authorities to grant repeated renewals of this authorization. It is therefore very desirable that, should this first experiment prove satisfactory, thanks to the precautions taken through your excellency’s obliging action which you were so good as to make known to me in your personal letter of the 14th of this month,1 the remainder of the supplies intended for Syria be put on board a vessel sufficiently large to carry the whole of them to destination in one trip.
Be pleased [etc.]
- Not printed.↩