I have given thoughtful consideration to your Excellency’s note of the 4th of April, 1915, inclosing a memorandum of the same date, in which your Excellency discusses the action of this Government with regard to trade between the United States and Germany, and the attitude of this Government with regard to the exportation of arms from the United States to the nations now at war with Germany.

I must admit that I am somewhat at a loss how to interpret your Excellency’s treatment of these matters.  There are many circumstances connected with these important subjects to which I would have expected your Excellency to advert but of which you make no mention, and there are other circumstances to which you do refer which I would have supposed to be hardly appropriate for discussion between the Government of the United States and the Government of Germany.

I shall take the liberty, therefore, of regarding your Excellency’s references to the course, pursued by the Government of the United States, with regard to interferences with trade from this country such as the Government of Great Britain have attempted, as intended merely to illustrate 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.