INTERVIEW WITH THE GERMAN FOREIGN MINISTER.

Colonist, Volume LVII, Issue 13783, 2 June 1915, Page 5

INTERVIEW WITH THE GERMAN FOREIGN MINISTER.

BRITISH BLOCKADE CONDEMNED

CAUSE OF WAR AGAINST

COMMERCE

(Received. June 1, 0.3 p.m.)

Washington, May 31

Herr yon Jagovr., Germaif Secretary for Foreign Affairs, interviewed by an American correspondent in Berlin, said that from the outset Germany had been willing to abandon submarine warring against, merchantmen if England raised her embargo upon foodstuffs and put raw material on the conditional contraband list. It was England's fault and not Germany's that America's well meant proposals fail-ad. The question of. foodstuffs and raw materials was not a question of necessity £or Germany, but of principle. Germany had

CABLE NEWS.

[Press Association—Copt eight.]

shown that she could' not be starved out. She might be short of some particular foodstuffs, but she had enough to live on and to continue the struggle. Similarly it was true of raw materials that she was able to get along even if imports were cut off. But Germany objected to Great Britain's cool assumption that when she was unable to defeat the German armies legitimately on the battlefield she was entitled to force the nation to its knees by economic pressure, disregarding all the accepted precepts and regulations. There was no precedent for the siege of the civilian population of a whole nation in its own land, with no possibility of escape. Germany would fight such an unjustifiable method of war with all the means at her disposal.

Herr yon Jagow said ho was unableto .tell how Germany's Note would be received. He had no means o,£ com-

municating with th© Ambassador at "Washington, and had had no cables, while their wireless was read or interfered with by the British. They were practically cut off from America, and were working in the dark.