Francis to Count Szögyényi, January 20, 1885

Mr. Francis to Count Szögyényi.

Your Excellency: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your excellency’s replies under date of January 13 and January 14, respectively, to my note of the 12th instant (F. O. 29) in regard to the case of Louis (or Leibel) Feinknopf.

In your excellency’s note of January 13 it is stated that the imperial royal ministry of war informed your excellency that “a telegraphic message had been sent to the military authority at Krakau ordering them immediately to liberate on furlough Leibel Feinknopf,” and in your excellency’s note of January 14 it is stated that, according to a communication your excellency had just then received from the imperial royal ministry of war, the order given on Friday, January 9, was “immediately executed by the military authorities at Krakau;” and your excellency remarks in this connection, “as I was convinced from the beginning.”

In regard to the positive statement that Feinknopf was released on furlough Friday, January 9, which statement was undoubtedly founded upon assurance to that effect given by the proper military authority at Krakau, I desire to call the attention of your excellency to the fact that a telegraphic message from the mother of Feinknopf, dated Krakau, January 12, 4.45 p.m., which I inclosed in my note of the same date for your excellency’s observation (since returned to me) declared that up to that hour her son had not been furloughed. This of itself might not be accepted as conclusive proof of the fact, as, receiving his furlough, he might have neglected to inform his mother that he had been released. But this seemed to me improbable, and I hastened to communicate with Feinknopf on the subject. I inclose herewith copy of his reply to my letter of inquiry which, it will be seen, is both categorical and specific in its statement of the dates of his arrest and committal to the barracks and his release upon the furlough granted. It would appear from this communication that, arrested on Thursday, the 8th of January, he was held and treated as a common soldier until Tuesday, January 13, a period of five days, and that the telegraphic message sent by the imperial royal ministry of war to the military authorities at Krakau on Friday, January 9, was not “immediately” executed; that is to say, it was not carried into effect at that date, nor until Tuesday, January 13.

I have deemed it proper to submit this statement to your excellency in view of the unjustifiable course of the military authorities at Krakau toward a citizen of the United States, against which I made earnest protest in my note to your excellency (F. O. 26) of the date of January 10.

And furthermore, I have to repeat with earnest urgency the request that, upon the evidence which has been presented in this case establishing under the second article of the treaty of 1870 the exemption of Louis (or Liebel) Feinknopf from all liabilities to do military service in the imperial royal army, his furlough be canceled by a certificate of such exemption, and that his name be erased from the military rolls at Krakau as owing the service attempted to be exacted from him. No attempt has been made to refute this evidence; yet after the lapse of nearly three months since his arrest, during which time he has been subjected to painful apprehensions, personal inconvenience, pecuniary sacrifice, and finally to the indignity of forcible impressment into the military organization at Krakau, where he was held five days under strictest military discipline, the case is still undecided by the Imperial Royal Government; the claim to military service he does not owe is not withdrawn; his situation is simply relieved by a furlough, the latter in itself implying that the claim upon him is still maintained.

I must, therefore, while acknowledging the spirit of courtesy and justice with which in repeated interviews your excellency has discussed with me this question, our views and conclusions apparently involving no differences of opinion, seriously reiterate the request that the rights of Louis (or Liebel) Feinknopf as a citizen of the United States, who has violated no law of the Imperial Royal Government and owes it no military service, shall be fully recognized, and that he be accorded the unconditional exemption to which he is entitled from further claim to such service. And in this connection I may say that delay of action in the case increases embarrassment, as it seriously interferes with the course of justice toward a citizen of a friendly power.

I avail myself, &c.,