Formal US protest against the blacklist

At the end of July 1916 the government of the United States lodged a formal protest with Britain against its blacklist. The note, dated 26 July, was cabled late that evening by the Acting Secretary of State, Frank Polk, to the ambassador in London, Walter Hines Page, with instructions to hand it to the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey. A British chronology of the war gives 28 July as the date of the protest. Washington announced that, in view of the agitation of American public opinion, it would publish the note in the press on Saturday morning, that is 29 July. In January the Americans had merely reserved the right to protest. Now they used it.

The list of 18 July

The blacklist, a register of firms in neutral countries with which Britons were forbidden to trade because of their enemy origin or links with the enemy, had been published for one country after another since the end of February. On 18 July London published such a list for the United States. According to the American consul general in London, it contained 85 firms. The effects reached far beyond Britain. British shipping lines stopped accepting cargo from the listed firms, and neutral shipowners feared that if they did so they would be refused coal in British ports and would end up on the list themselves. Neutral banks refused them credit and merchants refused them contracts. Americans trading with Latin America felt it most severely.

There was an outcry in Washington. The Secretary of State, Robert Lansing, was on leave, so Polk dealt with the matter. On 20 July he warned the British ambassador, Cecil Spring Rice, that the list would cause enormous irritation and would be grist to the mill of Germany’s supporters, and two days later he told him that some members of the cabinet considered firm steps necessary in defence of American interests. President Woodrow Wilson wrote on 23 July to his adviser Edward House that he was about at the end of his patience with Britain and her allies, and that the blacklist business was “the last straw”. Even Page, who was sympathetic to the British, cabled that their blunder was “flagrant” and that the list irritated the Allies’ most ardent friends in America. He attributed the idea of extending it to the whole world to “the unconscious zeal of academic advisers” of the government.

The content of the note

The American government wrote that it had learnt of the placing of American persons and firms on a proscriptive blacklist with “the most painful surprise”, and that it saw in it a policy of “arbitrary interference with neutral trade”, against which it must protest in the most decided terms. It recalled that citizens of the United States had the right to trade with any belligerent, subject only to well-defined rules of international law, which Britain had disregarded too lightly and too often. For breach of an actual blockade, the carriage of contraband and unneutral acts there were known remedies and penalties, imposed by prize courts after the parties had been heard. The blacklist, by contrast, as Washington put it, “condemns without hearing, without notice, and in advance”. The note ended with the statement that this practice could not be reconciled with the “justice, sincere friendship and impartiality” that ought to guide the relations of friendly governments.

London tried to soften the dispute. On 25 July Spring Rice assured Polk that the list did not in principle affect existing contracts, and that listed firms could apply to be removed. The same day the Minister of Blockade, Lord Robert Cecil, argued in the House of Commons that the criticism arose from a misunderstanding. The British wished only that British ships, goods and credit should not serve those who helped the enemy, and French law was even stricter in this respect. The dispute over the blacklist, together with the dispute over the search of mails, did more than anything else to sour American–British relations in the summer of 1916. In September Congress gave the President powers to take retaliatory measures, which Wilson in the end did not use, and Grey replied to the note only in October.