The Foreign Office requests this Embassy to find out through the American Embassy in London whether the reports concerning the imprisonment of German subjects in England are well founded. Unless a reply is received from the British Government before November 5 that all Germans who have not rendered themselves especially suspicious have been released, the German Government will be obliged to take retaliatory measures, and accordingly arrest all male British subjects in Germany between 17 and 55 years. American Minister, Copenhagen.
Copy of Telegram received from Berlin by the American Embassy, November 3, 1914.
Are Germans over 45 being arrested wholesale in England? If arrests are only of those under 45, I may be able to keep English over that age out of jail. Will not British Government allow all over 45 to leave? That is the legal military age here, and no one over that age can be compelled to serve.
Sir Edward Grey to Mr. Page, United States Ambassador in London.
Foreign Office,
November 9, 1914.
Your Excellency,
I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your Excellency’s note of the 30th ult., and of subsequent notes informing me of the attitude likely to be adopted by the German Government with regard to the measures that have been taken in this country for the detention of German subjects of military age.
The decision of His Majesty’s Government in this respect being clearly irrevocable, the communications which you were good enough to transmit did not appear to call for an immediate reply, although, as your Excellency is aware, the German Government threatened, and have since carried out, reprisals against British subjects in Germany.
At the same time, I hope in due course, when the measures taken here have assumed a definite form, proper consideration having been given to reasonable claims for exemption as regards particular categories of persons, to address your Excellency further on the subject, with a view of obtaining the release at least of British subjects in Germany who correspond to those categories.