THE EMBASSY BAG.

Hokitika Guardian, 10 December 1917, Page 4

THE EMBASSY BAG.

While the censorship regulations and the travel restrictions in all the belligerent countries grow stricter and stricter, while ships are held up and their cargoes examined, cables are censored and letters opened and read, one thing still passes unchallenged all guards and sentries outside the actual zone of the enemy’s influence, and that is the Ambassador’s bag.

I By the unwritten code of the diplomatic service, an Embassy or LegaI tion is always privileged to send its communications to its Government at home under an inviolable seal. War brings no interruption of this privilege even in the case of neutrals. At one period or another of the Avar there have been interesting references to the privilege, and in the latest case it is reported that Baron von Kuhlmann, the notorious inspirer of the secret agents of the German Government has been boasting that he can always get; information out. of Allied countries by means of lettai’s which liis spies in high places are able to transmit with seenrity under its cover. A few months ago this would have been treated as the idle boast of a vain man, but after the revelations of the duplicity of Count Lowen, Swedish Minister at Bueno3 Ayres, in transmitting as Swedish Government cables what were really code cables from Count Luxburg, the German Minister, even diplomatic circles do not dismiss it lightly. “ Well, you never know what form German cunning will take,” is the remark of one diplomat inclined to think that anything is possible after the Argentine exposure. On the other hand, the United States Embassy is most emphatic that in no- circumstances is outside correspondence allowed in the Ambassador’s bag. The Foreign Office, ot course, exercises no control over the contents of the bag, but it is 'an unwritten code of the service that it shall be used only for official correspondence,, and possibly the personal letters of the Ambassador and the principal members of his staff. The bags are sealed at the Embassies and conveyed by the Embassies’ own couriers, who are granted passports. A hag can be sent .as often as desired.