862.015311/23

Memorandum by the Secretary of State

The Counsellor of the German Embassy49 came in upon my invitation to the Ambassador to call. The Ambassador is in Atlantic City today.

In connection with the recent protest of the German Ambassador regarding what occurred in the decision of a case upon a complaint against certain persons accused of participating in the removal of the German flag from the bow of the SS Bremen on July 26, last, I proceeded to speak orally to the Counsellor as follows:

“It appears that those accused were charged with the violation of the Penal Law of New York, prohibiting unlawful assemblies.

“The magistrate reached the conclusion, upon the correctness of which the Department cannot undertake to pass, that the evidence submitted did not support the charge of unlawful assembly and dismissed the complaint and discharged the defendants on this charge.

“The complaint of the German Government is specifically directed at the statements made by the magistrate in rendering his decision which that Government interprets as an unwarranted reflection upon it.

“The Department is constrained to feel that the magistrate, in restating contentions of the defendants in the case and in commenting upon the incident, unfortunately so worded his opinion as to give the reasonable and definite impression that he was going out of his way adversely to criticise the German Government, which criticism was not a relevant or legitimate part of his judicial decision.

“I may explain that State and municipal officials are not instrumentalities of the Federal Government. Although in this country the right of freedom of speech is well recognized by our fundamental law, it is to be regretted that an official having no responsibility for [Page 490] maintaining relations between the United States and other countries should, regardless of what he may personally think of the laws and policies of other governments, thus indulge in expressions offensive to another government with which we have official relations.”

At the conclusion of the oral statement and getting entirely away from this transaction, and speaking entirely individually and informally to the Counsellor, I said that I desired to repeat what I had more than once said to the Ambassador, to the effect that we had many millions of devout, sincere, and patriotic Catholics in this country and some four millions of Jews equally patriotic; that without remotely referring to domestic conditions in Germany or their merits, I did desire to emphasize and to repeat that so long as wild news reports about serious and violent controversy continued to come out of Germany, regardless of what was actually and in truth happening in Germany, the German Government must realize our extreme difficulty in dealing with many individuals here who were disposed in reply or in retaliation to indulge in violent and critical language and other intemperate expressions; that the German Government could be helpful in our extremely difficult, not to say impossible, situation in this respect, by cooperating to prevent the wild news reports to which I was referring.

C[ordell] H[ull]
  1. Rudolf Leitner.