rsonal ideas, but a good many of my countrymen feel
the same. Greetings.

"WILHELM, Kronprinz."

The Official British Explanation

By Sir Edward Grey, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs of Great
Britain

The State Department in Washington and the Foreign Office in
London, by agreement, made public simultaneously on Jan. 10,
1915, the British reply to the American protest against the
undue detention of American ships and cargoes seized for
search for contraband. The answer, signed by Sir Edward
Grey, the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs,
was addressed to Walter Hines Page, the American Ambassador
in London, who cabled it to Washington on Jan. 7. The note
is preliminary, and was to be followed by a more detailed
reply.

_The British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to the American
Ambassador._

FOREIGN OFFICE, Jan. 7, 1915.

Your Excellency: I have the honor to acknowledge receipt of your note
of the 28th of December. It is being carefully examined and the points
raised in it are receiving consideration, as the result of which a
reply shall be addressed to your Excellency dealing in detail with the
issues raised and the points to which the United States Government
have drawn attention. This consideration and the preparation of the
reply will necessarily require some time, and I therefore desire to
send without further delay some preliminary observations which will, I
trust, help to clear the ground and remove some misconceptions that
seem to exist.

Let me say at once that we entirely recognize the most friendly spirit
referred to by your Excellency and that we desire to reply in the same
spirit and in the belief that, as your Excellency states, frankness
will best serve the continuance of cordial relations between the two
countries.

His Majesty's Government cordially concur in the principle enunciated
by the Government of the United States that a belligerent, in dealing
with trade between neutrals, should not interfere unless such
interference is necessary to protect the belligerent's national
safety, and then only to the extent to which this is necessary. We
shall endeavor to keep our action within the limits of this principle
on the understanding that it admits our right to interfere when such
interference is not with "bona-fide" trade between the United States
and another neutral country, but with trade in contraband desti