Count be Bismarck to Elihu B. Washburne, January 15, 1871

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Sir: I beg to inclose extracts of three letters addressed by persons residing in Paris to correspondents abroad. They are taken out of a balloon sent up in Paris and captured by our men. You will see from the copied passages that the facilities we have accorded to the correspondence of the American legation in London are known to private persons, some of them French, and made use of by them in order to carry on a clandestine correspondence with other people, some of them French, Those extracts further prove that Mr. Hoffmann is expected to lend a helping hand to an epistolary intercourse of that kind. I trust your excellency will effectually prevent the members of your legation from lending themselves to a practice, the continuance of which would make it imperative for me not to allow any letters to pass, except those bearing the seal of the State Department of Washington. It is the possibility of occurrences like these that makes the military authorities indisposed to favor a prompt expedition of your correspondence. Having reluctantly acceded to the whole arrangement, they would have preferred sending your dispatch-bag not to London, but directly to Washington; and now the question may he raised by them of cutting off any correspondence between you and London. In that case the best way, in my opinion, of obtaining a prompter expedition with the least inconvenience to you, would be to have the dispatch-bags for you made up and sealed, not in London, but in Washington, and to send private letters addressed to you personally together with, but not inclosed in, the bag.

Please let me know if such an arrangement would eventually suit you.

I remain, with the highest consideration, your excellency’s, &c.,