more fully the situation to which you desire to call our
attention, and not as an invitation to discuss that course.

Your Excellency's long experience in international affairs will have
suggested to you that these relations of the two Governments with one
another cannot wisely be made a subject of discussion with a third
Government, which cannot be fully informed as to the facts, and which
cannot be fully cognizant of the reasons for the course pursued.

I believe, however, that I am justified in assuming that what you desire
to call forth is a frank statement of the position of this Government in
regard to its obligations as a neutral power.

The general attitude and course of policy of this Government in the
maintenance of its neutrality I am particularly anxious that your
Excellency should see in their true light. I had hoped that this
Government's position in these respects had been made abundantly clear,
but I am, of course, perfectly willing to state it again.

This seems to me the more necessary and desirable because, I regret to
say, the language, which your Excellency employs in your memorandum, is
susceptible of being construed as impugning the good faith of the United
States in the performance of its duties as a neutral.

I take it for granted that no such implication was intended, but it is
so evident that your Excellency is laboring under certain false
impressions that I cannot be too explicit in setting forth the facts as
they are, when fully reviewed and comprehended.

In the first place, this Government has at no time and in no manner
yielded any one of its rights as a neutral to any one of the present
belligerents.

It has acknowledged, as a matter of course, the right of visit and
search and the right to apply the rules of contraband of war to articles
of commerce. It has, indeed, insisted upon the use of visit and search
as an absolutely necessary safeguard against mistaking neutral vessels
for vessels owned by any enemy and against mistaking legal cargoes for
illegal. It has admitted also the right of blockade if actually
exercised and effectively maintained.

These are merely the well-known limitations which war places upon
neutral commerce on the high seas. But nothing beyond these has it
conceded.

I call your Excellency's attention to this, notwithstanding it is
already known to all the world as a consequence of the publication of
our correspondence in regard to these matters with sev