No. 195.
Mr. Sargent to Mr. Frelinghuysen.
[Extract.]
Legation of
the United States,
Berlin, April 28, 1883.
(Received May 16.)
No. 145.]
Sir: I have the honor to report that No. 27 of
Commercial Relations, January, 1883, contains a dispatch of mine, on page 1,
upon the subject of the prohibition by Germany of our pork products, wherein
the representations on the subject by various trade associations and the
opposition press are stated, and the reasons why the prohibition is likely
to be made, and what remedy the United States may have, and should use, to
prevent such experiments against their interests, are stated.
As was necessary in such a dispatch, the truths, as they appeared to me, were
clearly stated, that you might be perfectly familiar with the issue with
which our Government had to deal so far as a close observation here, and a
zealous wish to do my duty, could enable you to become.
In the dispatch was also a personal allusion, useful to give an idea of the
state of feeling here in various circles. Such a dispatch, informing the
State Department of necessary facts, was, according to my view, entirely
proper. The St. James Gazette recently said, referring to the probability
that the English home office was well informed in regard to an annexation:
With what object do we keep up diplomatic establishments in every
European capital, if the first hint of a design on the part of some
rival power to seize an important territory is to come from a little
group of colonial politicians?
So it might be asked, “With what object do the United States keep up
diplomatic establishments in Europe if they must depend upon chance and
tardy sources for information as to measures affecting their interests?” To
send such information in such colorless form that if it were published the
Government to which the minister is accredited could not find a shade of
criticism or matter of exception, and yet the Department get from it a true
picture of occurrences having inimical tenden cies, and of which it should
be expressly warned, would seem impossible.
* * * * * * *
I inclose with translation an article from the Norddeutsche Allge-meine
Zeitung, * * * in which it is falsely alleged that the dispatch
[Page 378]
in question was a newspaper
article published by me in a newspaper of New York over my signature, and
distorting ingeniously the contents of the dispatch. It ascribes to me the
words and arguments which I expressly said were copied from German papers;
declares that I said the German Government is not at all a Government of
public opinion, but is sure to do the exact opposite of what public opinion
demands; whereas I said, “If this were strictly a Government of public
opinion in the American sense, these general public
appeals would prevail.” It alleges that I said (three months before the
ordinance was passed at all) that it was passed by a trick over the heads of
the Reichstag, &c. By a comparison with the original you will see the
malignity and falsehood of this travesty.
If I had so far forgotten my duty as to publish an article on a political
subject in an American newspaper over my signature, I should feel only
repaid even by such gross caricature of what it contained. The paper in
question knew that I was innocent of any publication whatever, for a month
before it had published the substance of it correctly, and said it was a
dispatch to my Government, and berated the opposition papers for furnishing
such arguments against the measures of their own Government. To give
plausibility to this attack it was necessary to ignore that, and to
sufficiently fire the hearts of its readers it was necessary to grossly
misrepresent the contents of the document.
The undoubted purpose of this publication was to work on the patriotic pride
of the Germans, by leading them to resent foreign complaint of the action of
their Government, and make partisans for the maintenance of prohibition. The
scheme was well planned, and undoubtedly works in the way foreseen.
* * * * * * *
I have, &c.,
[Inclosure in No. 145.—Extract from the
Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, April 24,
1883.—Translation.]
In the New Yorker Handels-Zeitung of March 10 last we find a publication
which bears the signature of the minister of the United States at
Berlin, and treats of the prohibition in Germany of American pork. The
first half of this article endeavors to describe the “opposition” to the
exclusion of American hog products manifested in; Berlin and other
cities, and refers in particular to articles of the National Zeitung,
and the—in the mean time deceased—Tribune. A political criticism of the
present form of government in Germany is connected with the description
of that opposition movement, the German Government being described as
one not “in the slightest degree a Government of public opinion,” but
one which most probably always did the reverse of that demanded by the
voice of public opinion as well as by the press on the basis “of logical
deductions from indisputable facts.”
The decree of prohibition is criticised as an illegal measure adopted
over the head of the Reichstag, and characterized by a leader of the
opposition in the Reichstag to be the author of the
article as being an “unworthy trick.”
It is possible that a German deputy has used such an expression to the
representative of a foreign power. We know more than one whom we
consider capable of such an act. On the other hand, it surprises us to
find the signature of a minister accredited to His Majesty the Emperor
under such declarations.
In the article it is further stated: “The Tribune, an influential organ
of the party of progress, has convincingly shown the sanitary
harmiessness of American pork products. It was solely in the interests
of the larger land owners and meat producers of Germany that the
prohibition which took 15,000 marks annually from the poor to give them
to the rich was issued.” At this point the style of the publication
attains a pathos, to which we fear our quotation will not do justice; it
is stated word for word:
“But woe to the poor who pay to him (the rich) the 15,000 marks; woe to
the hungry who imagine that it is a duty of the Government not to allow
the price of food to-become too high.”
[Page 379]
The National Zeitnng had also furnished a similar argument that could not
be refuted in favor of American interests; that journal had in
particular asserted that last year’s good harvest had afforded such rich
profits to German land owners that their interests did not require this
exclusion of American pork from German markets. Here too, therefore, the
unveiled insinuation is uttered that the Imperial Government had adopted
those measures solely for the purpose of favoring a single class, while
the existence of weighty sanitary police motives for the prohibition is
not conceded or mentioned with a single word.
In the last part of the publication the damage to American interests to
result from the decree of prohibition is referred to, and reprisals are
threatened, leaving out of consideration the fact that North America for
whole decades has shut itself off from the products of European industry
by the highest protective and prohibitive duties, without our ever
having thought of demanding of America consideration for injured German
and disregard of American interests.
The publication closes with the declaration that America “cannot submit
to the exclusion of her products under false pretenses.”
The article, therefore, anticipates the employment of international
pressure to force the American trichinae upon the German consumer, after
the latter has borne the burden of inconsiderable taxation in order to
be protected against the domestic trichinae. This view is not without
analogy to that which was at the bottom of the Chinese opium war. What
Would the public and the press say in England if a German publication,
similar to that contained in the columns of the New Yorker
Handels-Zeitung, had attacked the prohibition of the importation of
German cattle into England with such arguments, and if under such
publication the name of the German ambassador accredited to the Queen of
England had stood? Assuredly such international warfare would not have
found in the English press organs to advocate the interests of a foreign
land at the expense of domestic policy.
