Executive Order 2616

Whereas Section 4 of the Red Cross Convention signed at Geneva, July 6, 1906, to which the United States is a party, provides:

Belligerents will keep each other mutually advised of internments and transfers, together with admissions to hospitals and deaths which occur among the sick and wounded in their hands. They will collect all objects of personal use, valuables, letters, etc., which are found upon the field of battle, or have been left by the sick or wounded who have died in sanitary formations, or other establishments, for transmission to persons in interest through the authorities of their own country (35 Stat. Pt. 2, 1885, 1891).

And Whereas the Charter of the American Red Cross of January 5, 1905, in Section 3, paragraph 4, provides:

That the purposes of this corporation are and shall be Fourth. To act in matters of voluntary relief and in accord with the military and naval authorities as a medium of communication between the people of the United States of America and their Army and Navy, and to act in such matters between similar national societies of other governments through the "Comite International de Secours" and the Government and the people and the Army and Navy of the United States of America. (33 Stat. 600)

Now therefore, in order that the said Conventional provision shall be carried out in good faith by the United States, it is ordered that the Executive Departments of the United States shall furnish to such representative as may be designated by the American Red Cross lists of all alien enemies now interned in the United States, to the end that the said lists may be forwarded to the International Red Cross at Geneva, in pursuance of the said recited provision of the Charter of the American Red Cross.

Woodrow Wilson 

The White House,

May 9 1917.

Notes

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This work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work of the United States federal government (see 17 U.S.C. 105).