File No. No. 763.72113/767

The Brazilian Chargé ( De Ipanema Moreira ) to the Secretary of State

[Translation]

Mr. Secretary of State: By order of my Government I have the honor to submit to Your Excellency’s due attention the following telegram just received by me from the Minister of Foreign Relations in reply to that which I sent on the 23d of this month transmitting the memorandum presented on that date by the representatives of the United States, England, France, and Italy at the conference held here on the subject of the cooperation of Brazil in the prosecution of the war:

I have, as was my duty, laid before the President of the Republic the declarations just sent us by the Allied nations through the United States making the suppression of the black lists and any assistance that might be extended to Brazil in the way of direct loans or advanced payment for purchases conditional upon the immediate liquidation of enemy banks and concerns.

The Federal Government is surprised at the terms of that notification and begs leave to answer that self-interest never guided its policy and that it entered the war of its own free will, with its own resources, at a doubtful moment for the Allied arms, owing to the defection of Russia and the severe ordeals experienced on the Italian front.

The Federal Government further begs leave to remark that as early as June 7 it decided of its own accord to liquidate the enemy banks and concerns with parent firms in Germany. The Minister of Foreign Relations declared on that day that we were not deprived of definite authority for such action by the fact that, as distinguished from powers which, under the pressure of extraordinary circumstances and in accordance with their laws, had, in this war, gone so [Page 355] far as to take confiscatory measures, Brazil, true to her constitution and the liberal spirit of her laws, had always made it a point of honor to enforce respect for foreign enemy property and domestic business. She could not, on that account, allow herself to compromise with actions that would change her status as a belligerent, such as tolerating, on the one hand, that enemy concerns should operate here and draw from this country profits with which to carry on the war, or, on the other, that nation with which we are associated should continue to maintain in Brazil, because of our inaction, the black lists or other methods of control or prohibition which appertain to her strict sovereignty. Thus it was that the Government of Brazil, from the beginning of its belligerency, prohibited the foreign commerce German firms, notified the ocean steamship companies not to them space on their ships and the custom houses to hold merchandise imported on neutral vessels; thus it was also that, after canceling all the contracts of Germans with the public authorities of the Union and of the States, from the contract with the Krupp firm for army supplies down to the railway concession and surveys, the Government decided to revoke the German banks license to do business, finally granting them a period of six months in which to liquidate.

Brazil continues to carry out the policy that she has followed, but on her own initiative, of her own free will, within the limits of her voluntary engagements as an Ally, without laying any claim whatsoever to the compensations that she may have earned for her attitude, and affirming once more, in this frank and friendly exposition, the solidarity of her policy and arms with the common cause of the independence of the nations. Nilo Pecanha.

I have [etc.]

A. de Ipanema Moreira