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  4. Document 227

File No. 763.72114A/101

The Secretary of State to the Minister in Switzerland ( Stovall)

[Telegram]
Washington, September 6, 1918, 4 p.m.

2669. For Garrett:

Shipping Board has requested that the transfer to an officers’ camp of the three officers of the merchant marine, namely, Capt. Alfred Oliver, Dr. John W. Brown, and David Johnson, now interned at Brandenburg, be arranged for, if possible, at the conference.1 Improvement of the lot of all the American merchant seamen and officers is to be desired, but care must be taken not to recognize directly or indirectly as valid the German contention that these men are prisoners of war and not civil prisoners.

Lansing
  1. American-German Prisoners of War Conference at Berne.↩