Mr. Secretary of State: As I had the honor verbally to inform the Assistant Secretary of State this morning, my Government has charged me to bring to the knowledge of Your Excellency that the Spanish Government has accepted the proposition of the Federal Council concerning the additional articles of the Geneva Convention.
I doubt not that Your Excellency will be pleased very soon to enable me to announce to the Federal Council that the Government of the Union also adheres for its part to the proposed modus vivendi, and in this expectation I offer to Your Excellency the expression of my very high consideration.
J.B. Pioda.
Department of State,
Washington, May 10, 1898.
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your note of May 9, formally notifying me that the Spanish Government has accepted the proposition of the Federal Council concerning the additional articles of the Geneva Convention, and expressing the hope that you would be soon enabled to inform your government that the United States Government adheres for its part to the proposed modus vivendi.
As you were advised in the verbal interview with the Second Assistant Secretary of State, to which you refer in your note of the ninth, I have already had the pleasure of informing you, by my official note of that date, that the United States Government would for its part treat as an effective modus vivendi the additional articles of 1868, with the amendments and interpretations of Articles IX and X thereof appearing in the publication communicated to me by you. I trust that that note, which apparently had not reached your hands at the time of your note to me of the same date, has now been received by you and its contents transmitted to the Federal Council.
Be pleased to accept, etc.,
William R. Day.
The additional articles concerning the Maritime Hospital Service in war, as modified by the modus vivendi, forming Articles VI to XV of the Treaty of Geneva when formally ratified, are:
Art. VI. The boats which, at their own risk and peril, during and after an engagement pick up the shipwrecked or wounded, or which, having picked them up, convey them on board a neutral or hospital ship, shall enjoy, until the accomplishment of their mission, the character of neutrality, as far as the circumstances of the engagement and the position of the ships engaged will permit.
The appreciation of these circumstances is entrusted to the humanity of all the combatants. The wrecked and wounded thus picked up and saved must not serve again during the continuance of the war.