John Jay to the Baron de Schwarz-Senborn, April 9, 1873
Mr. Jay to the Baron de Schwarz-Senborn.
Baron de Schwarz-Senborn: It is with some hesitation that I now address your excellency on a grave question connected with the exposition, for my official relations might perhaps seem to require me to communicate on such a subject only with his excellency the Count Andrassy, and yet, in view of the long and constant correspondence I have had the honor to hold with your excellency on various branches of the exposition, and of the friendly regard which has uniformly marked our pleasant intercourse, it seems due to that regard, that, before advising with the imperial and royal minister for foreign affairs, I should ask your excellency permission, as I now beg leave to do, to submit without complaint, simply for your excellency’s advice, the following statement:
I have received our official communication from Mr. McElrath, the senior American commissioner in Vienna, advising me that the British commissioners have taken possession, as they state, under a written authority from your excellency, of that part of the main hall of the exposition palace which lies directly in front of the transept and court allotted to the United States. “This change,” the commissioner remarks, “entirely excludes our exhibitors from any participation in this conspicuously wide and spacious hall, and deprives us of the advantages of our geographical position.” Accompanying letter of the commissioner is a copy of their first note to your excellency on the subject, dated April 1; of their note to Mr. P. Cunliffe Owen, secretary of the British commission, of the same date, sending that officer a copy of their note to your excellency, and expressing their willingness to leave the matter to international arbitration; of the reply of Mr. Owen, dated April 3, declining all discussion and rejecting the proposal for arbitration, and of their second letter to your excellency, dated April 4, inclosing a copy of the correspondence with Mr. Owen, and asking the favor of a reply at the earliest possible moment.
The commissioner states that, having received no reply from your excellency, and having been unfortunate in not finding your excellency at the appointments made for an interview, the correspondence is submitted to me as the Immediate representative of the President, with a request that I will take such action upon it as in my judgment will best promote harmony, at the same time that it preserves the rights and dignity of the United States.
The letters of the American commissioners have advised your excellency of the difficulty which they find in understanding the reason of the change, which had been effected without their knowledge, in the plan of the exposition and the position of America, and a similar difficulty is likely to exist in the United States.
In explaining to me the original plan of the Industrial Palace, your excellency advised me of the geographical arrangement which had been adopted; that the exposition was intended to instruct by the eye, and that the different countries were to appear in succession in their proper place; that the two Americas, North and South, would occupy the western end of the palace, standing together and apart from Europe; that on entering the palace at its western portal the visitors would find themselves on American territory, and pass first through the American exposition on their way to England, France, and Germany.
The advantage thus pointed out by your excellency as belonging to the American Republic, as the extreme western power, was not unnoticed in the United States, where the exposition has been regarded with peculiar interest, as affording the first opportunity for the proper presentment of the Western Continent to the people of Eastern Europe and Western Asia.
By the new geographical arrangement Great Britain appears as the extreme western power of the world, occupying nearly half of South America, and the whole of the principal nave between the American courts and transepts. The stream of visitors, on entering, will find itself not in American, but in British territory, surrounded by British manufacturers, and in that grand gallery, from the western portal to the rotunda, amid all the articles exposed for exposition, there will be no more reminder of the American Republic than if America had yet to be discovered, or if the United States were yet to be recognized by Austria-Hungary as entitled to a place among the great powers of the world.
The new position assigned to America accords as little with international history as with geographical truth; and, as the Vienna exposition is intended fairly to represent the present and not the past, your excellency will pardon me for the remark, that nearly a century has passed since the fitting place for the United States in a gathering of the powers of the world was as a side adjunct to the British Empire.
To the natural question of the commissioners, why those changes had been made; why the proper place assigned for America in the great nave, and of which your excellency showed me the advantages, has been taken from her and assigned to England, not with any equivalent advantage to our republic, but wholly to her disadvantage, banishing her absolutely from the central hall, and remitting her to a comparatively inferior and obscure position; and especially to the question why if England wanted more space it could not be taken in her own transepts, instead of taking the space allotted to America in the nave, no answer has been given beyond the reply of the secretary of the royal commission, which can hardly be expected to satisfy my countrymen, that they decline discussion or arbitration, and rest their claim to the space in question upon an allotment from your excellency, which had been duly paid for
If for this deprivation of the republic from her equal rights, and her banishment from the great hall of the palace, without even a notice to her commissioners, any apology has been afforded by the conduct of the American commission, I am unadvised of the fact. I have not heard the smallest complaint of the course of that body, and I believe that their conduct in the matter, from the beginning, has been marked by the most perfect courtesy and fairness. I understand that they have accepted in the various departments the arrangements made by your excellency for the American Republic without complaint, if not always without surprise, at the inequality of the allotment, and that they have incurred without hesitation the expense of inclosing their court, and building a hall for machinery, rendered necessary by the scanty space in that department.
I have no hesitation in saying, that had any authorized member of that commission attempted to mar the harmony of an international gathering intended to illustrate the height of the world’s culture by any act of discourtesy or unfairness toward another nationality, or by any attempt to gain an advantage over rival exhibitors by means unbecoming the dignity and honor of the republic, his conduct would have been met by the reprobation of Americans as certainly as it would have been by the contempt of the world.
In the bearing of the President and of Congress toward this great work of the imperial and royal government, I am equally at a loss to find an excuse for this unexpected treatment of my country at the moment when their efforts for a generous representation of American products from its fullest limits were being crowned with success.
Permit me to recall to your excellency the fact, that before the close of the year 1871 the imperial and royal government had received the most cordial assurances on this subject from the United States. In an official note addressed to this legation on the 7th January, 1872, and which was published at Washington in the diplomatic correspondence of that year, his excellency the Count Andrassy, master of the imperial house, and imperial royal minister for foreign affairs, said:
“The minister for foreign affairs has observed with great pleasure, from a report of the Austro-Hungarian legation at Washington, how friendly an interest is cherished by the Government of the United States of America in the success of our great patriotic work, the universal exposition at Vienna.
“As it has not failed to impress him that these favorable feelings are chiefly to be ascribed to the active co-operation exhibited by the envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary, John Jay, in behalf of the enterprise, the undersigned minister of the imperial house and of foreign affairs has the honor to express the most sincere thanks of the imperial and royal government, and solicits a continuance of his favorable support.”
In reply to this last clause I said:
“The undersigned begs leave to assure his excellency that it will afford him the sincerest pleasure to do whatever lies in his power to accomplish, in this regard, the favoring wishes of the President, whose friendly interest in the success of the exposition has been so cordially expressed to the envoy of the imperial and royal government.”
The promise thus given by me has been, as your excellency is aware, faithfully kept, and the proceedings in the United States for accomplishing your wishes have steadily advanced.
In June, 1872, Congress passed the first act on the subject for the appointment of commissioners. In December, President Grant recommended to Congress the making of an adequate appropriation, referring to the exposition “as being on a scale of very great magnitude,” and remarking that “the tendency of these expositions is in the direction of advanced civilization and the elevation of industry and of labor, and of the increase of human happiness as well as of greater intercourse and good-will between nations.”
Congress, thus appealed to, made an appropriation of $200,000. The President appointed, in accordance with their joint resolution, eight practical artisans, seven scientific men, and eighty-nine honorary commissioners. Two ships of the United States Navy, now on their way to Trieste, were detailed to bring the goods of the exhibitors, who are reported to be about 700 in number, and it is stated in a New York journal that from 1,200 to 1,500 exhibitors, mechanics, and assistants will be employed in the American department and in the working of the machinery.
I need scarcely say to your excellency that the interest which I have felt from the commencement in the fitting representation of America at the exposition, and the friendly interest which the President so cordially expressed to his excellency the Baron Lederer, at Washington, in. December, 1871, which was so gracefully acknowledged by the Count Andrassy in January, 1872, was based upon the assumption that, the United States had been invited to assist at the exposition on an equal footing with the other great powers, and that no American envoy, no President of the United States, no member of Congress, and no true American citizen would consent to the appearance of the republic at an international exposition upon any other condition.
The partial plan of the Palace of Industry, furnished to me by your excellency, showing the American section marked and colored, showed no appropriation of any part of the nave, and there was nothing in its lines to dispel my belief that the nationalities occupying transepts would have, of course, their share of the nave adjoining them.
Among the great powers who are to assemble at Vienna, America is the only one whom it is now proposed to exclude from that common privilege.
Without touching these questions that will be thoroughly and widely discussed hereafter in regard to the motives and the measures connected with this attempt to oust America from her geographical place in the principal hall of the exposition, and to exclude from competition and observation in that hall all American products and manufactures, I ask your excellency simply to observe that the American commission, when their ships are approaching your port of Trieste, are requested to acquiesce in that exclusion, to yield the place of the American Republic as the first western power to Great Britain’, and to accept for her hundreds of exhibitors from thirty States, extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the borders of Canada to those of Mexico, a position inferior in dignity to that awarded to the exhibitors of England, France, Italy, and Germany.
Your excellency, I think, will frankly admit that these conditions differ so widely from that equal footing on which the President, the Congress, and the people of the United States supposed that they were invited to assist at this international festival, that no duty will be left me, should I submit the case without avail to your excellency, than to advise his excellency Count Andrassy of the unexpected circumstances which must forbid my longer fulfilling the assurances which I gave so cordially in response to the request of the imperial royal government, and to announce to the President the final decision of the imperial commission.
I deem it but justice to your excellency to add the expression of my belief that, in consenting to the cession of the space in question, your excellency, immersed in perplexing duties, and with an unusual strain upon your time and thoughts, did not appreciate the full significance of the act, and that your excellency had no real intention of ignoring the equality of right between rival nationalities, or of offending the just susceptibilities of the American people.
Further than this, I think that your excellency is now convinced that, apart from any assurances given or implied in your excellency’s language to me, of which I had never a doubt, the geographical plan of the exposition, as announced to the world, entitled the Americas, equally with Europe, to be represented in the nave, and that the American Republic should not have been shut out, without an opportunity of being heard, on the solicitation or for the benefit of European exhibitors.
Entertaining these convictions, I have pleasure in asking your excellency’s attention to the following passage in the note of Mr. Commissioner McElrath:
“The eminent French contractors, Messrs. Bose and Matthiessen, now inform me that on three days’ notice they will contract to inclose a court similar to the one they are now building for us, and complete it within fifteen days.”
“If, therefore, the exclusion of America from the nave has been, as I assume, unintentional on the part of your excellency, there is still time and opportunity to repair the error. England has two courts, either of which will afford to her exhibitors more than the space of which she has obtained possession in the American department, and her manufacturers can be amply accommodated without excluding from the hall the American Republic.
I therefore venture to trust that your excellency will not hesitate to restore at once the original geographical plan, and return to the Americans the whole of their transepts and courts, and the space in the great hail lying between them.
Although formally unauthorized to speak for the States of North and South America who are unrepresented at Vienna, your excellency will. I trust, permit me, as the envoy of the American Republic, to exercise the friendly office of saying a word in behalf of those absent American States which may be preparing to assist at your exposition, and to ask that so much of the South American court and transept as may not be required by the empire of Brazil shall be reserved exclusively for exhibitors from the two Americas, as they may agree together. I am informed that a vessel is now on its way from Venezuela with a cargo for the exposition; and it is possible that, before its close, articles may come from Mexico, the States of Central America, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Chili.
I have, to-day, seen Sir Andrew Buchanan, one of the members of the royal commission of Great Britain, and, in a conversation on this subject, commenced by his excellency, I learned that his excellency had been entirely unaware, until I informed him of the fact, that the space which he had regarded as beyond the reach of arbitration, for the reason that it had been assigned and paid for by British exhibitors under a written allotment by your excellency, had been previously allotted to North and South America under the geographical plan, and that, under that plan and your excellency’s assurance that visitors would enter on American territory and pass first through the American exhibition, we had regarded our fair share of the hall as pledged to us as certainly and sacredly by the imperial invitation and your excellency’s word as if it had been given under the imperial seal.
I presume that the members generally of the royal British commission are equally unaware of the true state of the case, and that his royal highness and the illustrious noblemen and gentlemen who compose that distinguished body, true to their ancestral mottoes, noblesse oblige and fair play, would be as prompt to disapprove any want of fairness to their American rivals as they would have been to resent the wrong if an American commissioner, with uninclosed courts at his disposal, had obtained, without notice to them, a concession of the nave, between the British sections, to compel Englishmen, thus excluded from the principal hall, to enter their transepts as side adjuncts to an American department.
I am sure that your excellency has never intended that your exposition, looking, as it does, to the increased good-will of nations, should to any degree impair the supremacy of international courtesy and international justice as the unwritten but inexorable law of nations, the smallest violation of which is to be adjudged before the tribunal of the world.
For this reason, now that your excellency has learned that the foreign occupation of our proper American territory is conspicuous neither for courtesy nor for justice, and that an easy solution of the difficulty by the substitution of space in the courts happily presents itself, I indulge the hope, not devoid of confidence, that the American department will be at once restored to its integrity and independence, and the republic re-instated in its original and geographical position; nor am I without a hope that the royal commission of Her Majesty, when made aware of the facts, will give to this arrangement their prompt and full approval.
Should I he unfortunately disappointed in my expectations as to the action which your excellency may think fit to take in restoring us to what we believe to be Our rights, I have only to say that, in announcing to the President the change that has been made, and the circumstances under which it has been effected, I will faithfully transmit to the President whatever explanations your excellency may think fit to furnish.
I have, &c.,