811.6363/94
The Secretary of State to the British Ambassador (Geddes)
Memorandum
The Secretary of State presents his compliments to His Excellency, the Ambassador of Great Britain, and has the honor to acknowledge the receipt of a memorandum dated March 15, 1923, in which the Ambassador refers to the report, under date of February 12, 1923, submitted by the Federal Trade Commission to the Senate of the United States in response to Senate Resolution 311, 67th Congress, 2nd Session, and to the use in that report of certain documents which purport to contain extracts from a proclamation dated September 24, [Page 267] 1884, and from an agreement dated August 23, 1885, between the Secretary of State for India and the Burma Oil Company, in relation to the development of the oil fields of Burma. The Ambassador directs attention to the previous correspondence between the British Embassy and the Department of State concerning these documents; and to the fact that they had been denounced by the British Government as spurious. The Ambassador affirms his confidence that the Secretary of State will now desire to repudiate the documents as known forgeries.
The Secretary of State begs leave to inform the British Ambassador, confirming what he has already stated to the Ambassador orally, that the Department of State had no part in the preparation of the report of the Federal Trade Commission to which reference is made in the British memorandum and was not aware prior to the receipt of the memorandum that it contained references to the documents which the British Government had stated to be spurious. Upon receipt of the British Ambassador’s memorandum the Secretary of State took up the matter with the Federal Trade Commission, with the result that all reference to the documents in question has been deleted from the Commission’s report and will not appear in the report as published. The printing of the report, it may be added, has not yet been completed, and the “multigraph copies” to which the Ambassador’s memorandum refers, were copies not of the report proper but of a condensed statement.
The Secretary of State has taken note of the statement of the British Ambassador that he feels confident that the Secretary of State will now desire publicly to repudiate the documents as known forgeries. In reply, the Secretary of State begs to say that he has addressed an identic communication to the Department of the Interior, to the Department of Commerce and to the Federal Trade Commission, the agencies of the Government of the United States which deal with matters to which the documents in question may be deemed to be most pertinent, advising them respectively that the documents in question have been denounced by the British Government as spurious and that this statement as to their character is accepted by the Government of the United States. The Secretary of State is making public the text of these communications, a copy of which is enclosed with this memorandum.
As the British Ambassador in his memorandum has deemed it appropriate to review the correspondence between the Department of State and the British Embassy concerning these documents, the Secretary of State feels that he should refer to the steps taken and to the attitude of this Government which this correspondence makes clear. It is understood that the documents in question were first [Page 268] described in a report of the Bureau of Mines to the Secretary of the Interior in May, 1919. This report has not been published but reference was made to it in a speech in the Senate of the United States in July, 1919. In a note dated November 6, 1919, the British Embassy called attention to these remarks, which were stated to represent inaccurately the policy of Great Britain with respect to petroleum, but while it would appear from the Embassy’s note that the Embassy had had access to the report of the Bureau of Mines, no reference was made to the statement in that report regarding Burma although specific exception was taken to other statements.
The report which was printed subsequently in Senate Document No. 272, 66th Congress, 2nd Session, of May 17, 1920, was, it is believed, the first published statement wherein there was specific reference to the documents in question. This report was published in May, 1920. The question of the authenticity of these documents appears to have been raised for the first time in the summer of 1921.
In a note addressed to the British Ambassador by the Secretary of State on September 23, 1921,59 it was stated that the American Embassy in London had been instructed some weeks before to make inquiry regarding these documents and that, although the Secretary of State was not in possession of definite information, it seemed clear that their authenticity was open to serious question. The Secretary of State then requested the British Ambassador to supply him “with an exact transcript of the laws, ordinances or regulations which are now or have recently been in force in India and especially in Burma bearing on the question of participation by aliens in petroleum development, to the end that any inadequacy or inaccuracy which may be found in the statements under discussion may be speedily corrected.” The Secretary of State furthermore pointed out in this note that, in a memorandum on the petroleum situation published by the British Government in 1921, of which a copy was transmitted to the Secretary of State by the British Embassy on July 27, 1921,59 the statement was made in relation to India that “prospecting or mining leases have been, in practice, granted only to British subjects or to companies controlled by British subjects.”
The British Ambassador replied in a memorandum of November 15, 1921, and, referring to the inquiry made in London on behalf of the American Embassy with respect to the authenticity of the documents in question, said that the India Office, to which the matter had been referred, had stated that in their judgment the documents in question were self-evident forgeries. The British Ambassador then [Page 269] said that he had been instructed to bring the matter to the notice of the Secretary of State and to suggest the propriety of the publication of an acknowledgment that the statement in Senate Document No. 272, 66th Congress, 2nd Session, relating to the documents in question, was erroneously made and that “it had been discovered to be entirely devoid of foundation.”
The Secretary of State, replying in a memorandum of December 10, 1921, reviewed the circumstances, and pointed out that it was “not yet entirely clear whether it is to be understood that the statement as originally made by the Director of the Bureau of Mines was wholly erroneous or was substantially or in part correct”. It appeared that doubt upon this point seemed to be the more justified because of what was stated in the official memorandum by the British Government quoted above with respect to prospecting or mining leases in India. The Secretary of State concluded with the following statement: “It has been felt appropriate to make these requests for further information, since it would seem that any published statement at this date relating merely to the accuracy of the citations or to the authenticity of the particular documents cited would not only fail to do full justice to the policy of the British Government, but might even furnish an occasion for renewed inferences of a mistaken character.”
The British Ambassador made reply to this in a memorandum dated May 18, 1922, saying that His Majesty’s Government had informed him “that the regulations governing the exploitation of oil in India and Burma are being collected for communication to the United States Government in compliance with their request.” The Ambassador added, however, that His Majesty’s Government did not consider that the request advanced by the United States Government for the communication of these regulations should be allowed any longer to delay the repudiation of the documents contained in Senate Document No. 272, 66th Congress, 2nd Session, to which reference had been made in the prior correspondence.
In reply the Secretary of State, in a memorandum of June 10, 1922, assured the British Ambassador of his entire willingness to issue a statement for the purpose of correcting any misapprehension which might have arisen from reference to documents which the British Government declared not to be genuine. The Secretary of State said, however, that it was to be noted “that the significance of the documents, to which reference was made, lay merely in the support of the statement that American oil companies were expressly excluded from doing business in Burma.” It was stated that it was the understanding of the Secretary of State that this was still the [Page 270] fact; that if this was a misunderstanding and it was “the intention of the British Government, in desiring the correction, to call attention to the fact that no exclusion of American nationals or companies in India was intended, it would be particularly gratifying to the Secretary of State to be able to state that the regulations in practice in India have been, or that they may be so modified as to accord to American nationals and companies the same opportunity and treatment as those enjoyed by British nationals and companies.” The memorandum concluded as follows: “The Secretary of State, while entirely willing to accept the statement of the British Government, and to make announcement to the effect that the documents above referred to are spurious, would not be able to make such an announcement with the implication that no exclusion of American nationals or companies in India is intended, unless the British Government is prepared to give an assurance to that effect; otherwise the repudiation of the documents must be accompanied with a statement, according to the information of the Secretary of State, that in fact American oil companies are excluded from doing business in Burma.”
The Secretary of State begs leave to point out that no further statement on the subject was received from the British Ambassador until the presentation of the Ambassador’s memorandum of March 15, 1923. The Secretary of State feels that he should also call attention to the fact that although the British Ambassador notified him in his memorandum of May 18, 1922, that the regulations governing the exploitation of oil in India and Burma were being collected for communication to the United States Government, the Secretary of State has not yet received this information.
It is hardly necessary to add that the Secretary of State does not wish that the repudiated documents be used in any way by this Government. As already stated, as soon as the fact of their inclusion in the report of the Federal Trade Commission was brought to his attention the Secretary of State at once took steps to have them deleted from that report. While he had hoped before this to receive copies of the actual regulations for India so that their substance could be appropriately set forth in the contemplated statement on the subject, the Secretary of State has decided not to wait longer for this information but to communicate with the other departments of government as above stated and to make public announcement accordingly. However, in the absence of the information sought from the British Government, the Secretary of State feels obliged in making these communications and this announcement to say that while repudiating the citations in question, he believes the conclusions [Page 271] as to the British practice in India, as stated in the second paragraph above quoted from Senate Document No. 272, 66th Congress, 2nd Session, to be substantially correct.