No. 197.
Mr. Sargent to Mr. Frelinghuysen.
Berlin, May 4, 1883. (Received May 21.)
Sir: I have the honor, referring to my No. 145, of 30th April, to state that the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeituug has, since I sent said dispatch, viz, in its issue of the 1st May, partially atoned for the inhospitable [Page 380] attack upon the representative of a foreign Government, and its gross misrepresentations of his utterances, by publishing the whole of my dispatch of January 1, accompanying it with the remark that it had no wish to be inhospitable to an accredited representative to His Majesty of a friendly foreign country, but still affecting to believe that my name to the document was a forgery or unexplained. It is somewhat comically contradicted in this by the introductory remark of the New Yorker Handels-Zeitung which it copies, and which precedes the dispatch in its columns. This apology is as much as may well be expected, * * * and perhaps much more, and I presume the incident is terminated.
Meanwhile the German and continental press has been somewhat busy over the matter. The semi-official German press has become very moderate or been silent.
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The London Times correspondent of the 1st instant says:
Imitating the action of the German federal council, the Greek Government has, from sanitary considerations, forbidden the importation of all sorts of American pig flesh. It may be mentioned that Prince Bismarck’s organ, the North German Gazette, publishes to-day the text of the dispatch which Mr. Sargent, the American minister here, addressed to his Government on the subject of the interdict, and on an incorrect rendering of which this organ founded its late personal attack on the accredited representative of the United States, an attack which any member of the diplomatic corps would have been justly entitled to regard as a clear infringement of his rights and privileges. The publication of the full dispatch in question, though prefaced by a weak and transparent attempt to excuse the previous attack, must therefore be regarded as a humble but inadequate apology to the American minister, seeing that the North German Gazette thus convicts itself of having grossly misrepresented his excellency’s meaning, and imputed to him words which he never used.
The North American Times, published in London, says:
The United States minister at Berlin has been attacked by the Norddeutsche Zeitung for sending to a New York paper his official report on the prohibition of the import of American pork into Germany. How does the journal know that the minister sent the article in the New York paper? And how can it complain of Mr. Sargent sending a dispatch to his Government on a matter concerning American commerce? It is the duty of the minister to write such dispatch, to express an opinion on the matter, to quote other opinions both for and against—in a word, to give his Government all the information he could glean. The point of attack is that the North German Gazette is under the inspiration of Prince Bismarck, and the exclusion has been exciting a strong feeling on the other side.
The same paper, referring to a former dispatch in the London Times, says:
The Times tells us that the minister’s comments thus published in a New York trade journal have caused no slight displeasure in high quarters in Berlin. But we can tell those who feel this displeasure that their action had aroused noslight displeasure among the sovereign people of America; not that the exclusion is a’matter of moment just now, but that it indicates an inclination to exclude American products generally. It is true, as the Times remarks, “that the measure was less of a sanitary than of a prohibitive nature.”
The American Register, published in Paris, has the following:
The North German Gazette, the official organ of Prince Bismarck, criticises an article in the New Yorker Handels-Zeitung, respecting the prohibition to import of American pork into Germany. The article in question spoke of reprisals, and was signed by the American minister at Berlin. The North German Gazette expresses surprise at seeing the signature of the American minister to the article in question, and adds, “that when the article in question speaks of reprisals in order to force American trichinae upon German consumers, it was an argument not unlike that which formed the ground of the Chinese opium war.”
The commercial policy of Prince Bismarck is a protective policy, and so far it resembles that of the United Spates. Now, the protective system is essentially one of strict reciprocity, and it was only the other day that the German minister of commerce [Page 381] threatened Spain with reprisals; there is therefore no reason why the minister should be so horrified at the system which he applies to others being applied to himself. Of course, Germany does quite right to exclude American pork when it is infected by trichinæ, but what Americans object to is the assumption that American pork is infected with trichinae after it has been shown that, owing to the length of the voyage from America to Europe, the parasite cannot survive in the dead animal, and that, therefore, trichinæ in American pork are an impossibility. It is very curious that, while the North German Gazette denounces American pork, the French papers denounce that of Germany on similar grounds. Perhaps German trichinæ require to be protected, and, if so, the solicitude of the North German Gazette for their welfare is comprehensible.
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I have, &c.,