Another cause for irritation and misunderstanding between Great Britain and
America has just been removed. In a letter to the Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Hughes has announced officially that an alleged proclamation signed by Queen Victoria and Lord Salisbury, as Secretary of State for India., on September 24th, 1884, and expressly excluding American oil companies from doing business in Burma, is a bogus document. The curious and ungrammatical terminology of the document, and the fact that Lord Salisbury was not Secretary of State for India in 1884, should have shown the spurious character of the proclamation long since. As a matter of fact, it has been known and admitted by the State Department since the summer of 1921, yet the document has been officially referred to and quoted several times during the past year. The propagation of this error may have been due to the water-tight character of the various departments of the United States Government ; but now it is happily exposed and will no longer fester in earnest breasts.
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