It is, of course, not necessary to remind the German Government that the
sole right of a belligerent in dealing with neutral vessels on the high
seas is limited to visit and search, unless a blockade is proclaimed and
effectively maintained, which this Government does not understand to be
proposed in this case. To declare or exercise a right to attack and
destroy any vessel entering a prescribed area of the high seas without
first certainly determining its belligerent nationality and the
contraband character of its cargo would be an act so unprecedented in
naval warfare that this Government is reluctant to believe that the
Imperial Government of Germany in this case contemplates it as possible.

The suspicion that enemy ships are using neutral flags improperly can
create no just presumption that all ships traversing a prescribed area
are subject to the same suspicion. It is to determine exactly such
questions that this Government understands the right of visit and search
to have been recognized.

This Government has carefully noted the explanatory statement issued by
the Imperial German Government at the same time with the proclamation of
the German Admiralty, and takes this occasion to remind the Imperial
German Government very respectfully that the Government of the United
States is open to none of the criticisms for unneutral action to which
the German Government believes the Governments of certain other neutral
nations have laid themselves open; that the Government of the United
States has not consented to or acquiesced in any measures which may have
been taken by the other belligerent nations in the present war which
operate to restrain neutral trade, but has, on the contrary, taken in
all such matters a position which warrants it in holding those
Governments responsible in the proper way for any untoward effects on
American shipping which the accepted principles of international law do
not justify; and that it, therefore, regards itself as free in the
present instance to take with a clear conscience and upon accepted
principles the position indicated in this note.

If the commanders of German vessels of war should act upon the
presumption that the flag of the United States was not being used in
good faith and should destroy on the high seas an American vessel or the
lives of American citizens, it would be difficult for the Government of
the United States to view the act in any other light than as an
indefensi