Note on the Dutch ships

On the evening of 7 March 1918 the Foreign Office sent the British minister at The Hague, Walter Townley, a telegram that was in practice a final warning to the Dutch government over its ships lying in Allied ports. A British chronology of the war records under this date the final Allied note on the Dutch ships, and under 18 March their acceptance by the Netherlands. British and American documents, published in the American collection Foreign Relations of the United States, show that the Dutch reply was conditional and that in London it was regarded as a refusal. We describe the two events together.

The end of patience

More than two months had passed since the proposal of 4 January, and the Dutch government had still not ratified the agreement worked out in London. Nor had it carried out the provisional arrangement of 25 January on the ships in American ports, because Germany had threatened to sink Dutch ships that entered Allied service and announced that no ship lying in a Dutch port would sail. On 4 March Lord Robert Cecil, the British Minister of Blockade, warned the Dutch delegate in London that the Allies could not wait indefinitely. If before the following Monday, when an inter-Allied shipping conference was to meet in London, the Netherlands agreed to sign the tonnage part of the agreement, it would receive 100,000 tons of bread grain for May and June. The delegate understood that otherwise all Dutch ships would be requisitioned. The War Cabinet approved this way of putting the matter, and the British and French stopped Dutch ships from leaving their ports.

The content of the note

The telegram of 7 March, whose content Townley was to convey to the Dutch foreign minister, recalled that the terms of the agreement had been settled in London as early as January, and that no reply had since come from The Hague. The delay had changed the situation: the Allies could no longer replace their own ships on safe routes with Dutch ones, and the whole Dutch fleet lying idle in port was in practice helping the German submarine war. The original terms were therefore to be changed: the ships chartered by the Allies were to sail without any restriction as to waters, including the war zone. Unofficially Townley could announce that after the war the Allies would replace every Dutch ship sunk in that zone while in their service, and would try to deposit by 15 April 50,000 tons of wheat for the Dutch government in an American port and as much again in a South American port. The reply was to arrive by 18 March at the latest. If the Netherlands refused, the Allies “would be compelled to take other steps” to bring the ships into service.

The Americans, who had been pressing for weeks for a swift requisition of the ships in their ports, agreed to wait. On 9 March the representative of the American War Trade Board in London and the American delegate to the Allied Maritime Transport Council advised Washington to join the British proposal. They argued that a joint requisition after the rejection of an ultimatum would harm relations with the Dutch less than sudden action by one country without warning.

The Hague’s reply

The Dutch government resisted the change of terms. On 11 March its minister in Washington pointed out that of the roughly 1.35 million tons of the Dutch ocean-going fleet, about 425,000 tons had already been placed at the disposal of the United States, and about 525,000 tons were carrying goods from the Dutch East Indies to America and British India. Agreeing to voyages in the war zone would make the position of the Netherlands, whose outlet to the North Sea Germany could cut off at any moment, untenable. On 12 March the foreign minister John Loudon presented to the States General a note on the course of the negotiations. He explained in it that the Netherlands could not make proposals of its own without an understanding with Germany, which opposed any increase in tonnage on the enemy side.

Meanwhile bread was beginning to run short in the country. According to the American minister at The Hague, the stocks of bread grain would be exhausted around the third week of May. Under this pressure the Dutch government partly gave way. In a telegram to its minister in London, received by the Foreign Office on 17 March, it agreed that some of the ships handed over to the Allies might also sail in the war zone, but it set conditions: the ships would not carry troops or war supplies, would not be armed, and their crews could refuse to sail in that zone. It also demanded a guarantee that sunk ships would be replaced after the war and 100,000 tons of wheat by mid-April, as an advance on the 400,000 tons provided for in the agreement. The British replied plainly that the ban on carrying war supplies was unacceptable, because in practice it would prevent any use of the ships, and that the ban on arming them could only serve the enemy. If acceptance without reservations did not arrive by the following evening, the reply would be regarded as a refusal. The acceptance that the chronology records under 18 March was therefore only conditional, and in London and Washington the requisition of the ships was already being prepared.