vessel at the time of its arrival in the Canal Zone. Such list shall contain the names of such Chinese persons, and other particulars regarding them, shown by the ship's papers, and shall be sworn to and subscribed by the master before the customs official to whom the list is delivered; and the customs official is hereby authorized to administer the oath to the master, provided, that when a vessel passes through the Canal, without discharging or taking on cargo or passengers therein, the master of such vessel shall not be required to furnish the list of persons prescribed by this section. If the master of the vessel refuses to deliver the list as required by this section, or fails or refuses to take and subscribe the oath prescribed herein; or if the master of such vessel permits any Chinese person on board the ship to land in the Canal Zone except by authority of the Governor of The Panama Canal, he shall be deemed guilty of a violation of this section.

Sec. 5. Chinese persons, arriving from foreign ports, who desire to enter the Canal Zone in transit to other countries, may be permitted to do so upon such conditions as the Governor of The Panama Canal may prescribe by general or special authorization.

Sec. 6. No Chinese member of the crew of any vessel shall be paid off and discharged within a port of the Canal Zone, without the consent of the Panama Canal authorities, unless it be shown by the ship's articles that said Chinese member of the crew signed said articles at a port in the Canal Zone; and seamen or other members of a ship's crew of the Chinese race, when discharged at any port in the Canal Zone under authority of the Governor, may land and remain temporarily therein until a re-shipment is obtained by them, provided a bond in the sum of $500.00 in each case, is executed by such Chinese person, satisfactory to the shipping commissioner, and payable to the Governor of The Panama Canal, and his successors in office, and conditioned that the principal in the bond, in good faith, will obtain a re-shipment and leave the Canal Zone at the earliest date practicable, to be fixed by the shipping commissioner; and said bond may be forfeited, for the full amount thereof, in favor of The Panama Canal, by judgment in the district court of the Canal Zone, should the principal in said bond fail to comply with any of the conditions thereof.

Sec. 7. This order shall not apply to diplomatic and consular agents of the Chinese government, who shall be entitled to be admitted into the Canal Zone upon proof of their official character; neither shall it apply to Chinese persons lawfully residing in the Canal Zone at the time of the promulgation of this order, but this shall not prevent their removal from the Canal Zone in accordance with the depopulation or deportation laws; neither shall this order apply to a Chinese person who is lawfully residing in the Republic of Panama at the time of the promulgation of this order, and such person shall be authorized to enter

into and cross the Canal Zone in a like manner as is permitted to the residents of the Republic of Panama; neither shall this order apply to Chinese persons whose services have been contracted for by the United States, The Panama Canal, or Panama Railroad Company, or any of the auxiliaries of the Canal or the Railroad Company; nor to domestic servants and others employed by persons engaged in the service of the Army or Navy of the United States, stationed in the Canal Zone, when such employment is with the sanction of the respective commanding officers of such forces on the Isthmus; nor shall it apply to any Chinese person coming into the Canal Zone by authority of the Governor of The Panama Canal.

Sec. 8. The Governor of The Panama Canal is hereby authorized to establish rules and regulations to more effectively carry out this order. Sec. 9. A violation of any of the provisions of this order shall be punished by a fine not to exceed $500.00 or imprisonment not to exceed one year, or both such fine and imprisonment, at the discretion of the court, in conformity with the above mentioned Act of Congress approved August 21, 1916.

Sec. 10. This order shall take effect sixty (60) days from and after its publication in the Panama Canal Record.

WOODROW WILSON.

[Naval Radio Stations for Alaska.]

The White House, February 20, 1917.

By virtue of the power and authority vested in and conferred upon me by the laws of the United States in that behalf made and provided, it is hereby ordered that the tract of land hereinafter described be and the same is hereby withdrawn from settlement, location, sale, entry, or other disposition, and reserved and set aside for the use of the U. S. Navy Department as a Naval Radio Station, namely:

Lots numbered 3 in section numbered 2, in T. 1 S., R. I W., containing 38.06 acres in Seward Principal Meridian, Alaska.

WOODROW WILSON.

The White House, February 21, 1917.

It is hereby ordered that all of the lands of the United States hereinafter described be, and the same are hereby, withdrawn from settlement, location, sale, or entry and reserved for the use of the Navy Department of the United States as a distant control receiving station, to be used in conjunction with naval radio station at Mile 312, near Cordova, Alaska:

All lands of the United States within one-fourth of a mile of that point on the Copper River and Northwestern Railroad, Alaska, designated as Mile 7%, and located on the left side of the tracks of said railroad, traveling from Cordova, Alaska.

WOODROW WILSON.

TO THE SENATE:

SPECIAL MESSAGE

In response to the resolution adopted by the Senate on March 1. 1917, requesting the President to furnish the Senate, if not incompatible with the public interest, whatever information he has concerning the note published in the press of this date purporting to have been sent January 19, 1917, by the German Secretary for Foreign Affairs to the German Minister to Mexico, I transmit herewith a report by the Secretary of State, which has my approval. WOODROW WILSON.

TO THE PRESIDENT:

[Inclosure.]

The resolution adopted by the United States Senate on March 1, 1917, requesting that that body be furnished, if not incompatible with the public interest, whatever information you have concerning the note published in the press of this date, purporting to have been sent January 19, 1917, by the German Secretary for Foreign Affairs to the German Minister to Mexico, I have the honor to state that the Government is in possession of evidence which establishes the fact that the note referred to is authentic, and that it is in possession of the Government of the United States, and that the evidence was procured by this Government during the present week, but that it is, in my opinion, incompatible with the public interest to send to the Senate at the present time any further information in possession of the Government of the United States rela

tive to the note mentioned in the resolution of the Senate. Respectfully submitted.

ROBERT LANSING.

PROCLAMATION

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

[Special Session of the Senate.]

Whereas public interests require that the Senate of the United States be convened at twelve o'clock on the fifth day of March next to receive such communications as may be made by the Executive;

Now, therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim and declare that an extraordinary occasion requires the Senate of the United States to convene at the Capitol, in the city of Washington, on the 5th day of March next, at 12 o'clock noon, of which all persons who shall at that time be entitled to act as members of that body are hereby required to take notice.

Given under my hand and the seal of the United States at Washington, the twenty-third of February in the year of our Lord one

thousand nine hundred and seventeen, and of the Independence of the United States the one hundred and forty-first.

[SEAL.] By the President:

ROBERT LANSING, Secretary of State.

WOODROW WILSON.

STATEMENT

[Issued from the White House by the President March 4, 1917, Following the Failure of the Sixty-fourth Congress to Pass the Armed Neutrality Act.]

The termination of the last session of the Sixty-fourth Congress by constitutional limitation discloses a situation unparalleled in the history of the country, perhaps unparalleled in the history of any modern. government.

In the immediate presence of a crisis fraught with more subtle and far-reaching possibilities of national danger than any other the Government has known within the whole history of its international relations, the Congress has been unable to act either to safeguard the country or to vindicate the elementary rights of its citizens.

More than five hundred of the five hundred and thirty-one members of the two Houses were ready and anxious to act; the House of Representatives had acted by an overwhelming majority; but the Senate was unable to act because a little group of eleven Senators had determined that it should not.

The Senate has no rules by which debate can be limited or brought to an end, no rules by which dilatory tactics of any kind can be prevented. A single member can stand in the way of action if he have but the physical endurance.

The result in this case is a complete paralysis alike of the legislative and of the executive branches of the Government.

The inability of the Senate to act has rendered some of the most necessary legislation of the session impossible, at a time when the need for it was most pressing and most evident. The bill which would have permitted such combinations of capital and of organization in the export and import trade of the country as the circumstances of international competition have made imperative-a bill which the business judgment of the whole country approved and demanded-has failed. The opposition of one or two Senators has made it impossible to increase the membership of the Interstate Commerce Commission or to give it the altered organization necessary for its efficiency.

The Conservation bill, which should have released for immediate use the mineral resources which are still locked up in the public lands, now that their release is more imperatively necessary than ever, and the bill which would have made the unused water power of the country immediately available for industry, have both failed, though they have been under consideration throughout the sessions of the two Congresses and have been twice passed by the House of Representatives.

The appropriations for the army have failed, along with the appropriations for the civil establishment of the Government, the appropriations for the Military Academy and the General Deficiency bill.

It has proved impossible to extend the powers of the Shipping Board

to meet the special needs of the new situation into which our commerce has been forced, or to increase the gold reserve of our national banking system to meet the circumstances of the existing financial situation.

It would not cure the difficulty to call the Sixty-fifth Congress in extraordinary session. The paralysis of the Senate would remain. The purpose and the spirit of action are not lacking now.

The Congress is more definitely united in thought and purpose at this moment, I venture to say, than it has been within the memory of any man now in its membership. There is not only the most united patriotic purpose, but the objects members have in view are perfectly clear and definite. But the Senate cannot act unless its leaders can obtain unanimous consent. Its majority is powerless, helpless.

In the midst of a crisis of extraordinary peril, when only definite and decided action can make the nation safe or shield it from war itself by the aggression of others, action is impossible.

Although as a matter of fact the nation and the representatives of the nation stand back of the executive with unprecedented unanimity and spirit, the impression made abroad will, of course, be that it is not so and that other governments may act as they please without fear that this Government can do anything at all. We cannot explain.

The explanation is incredible. The Senate of the United States is the only legislative body in the world which cannot act when its majority is ready for action. A little group of wilful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great Government of the United States helpless and contemptible.

The remedy? There is but one remedy. The only remedy is that the rules of the Senate shall be so altered that it can act. The country can be relied upon to draw the moral. I believe the Senate can be relied on to supply the means of action and save the country from disaster.

EXECUTIVE ORDER

The White House, January 15, 1917.

[Creating an Inter-Departmental Board on Location of Nitrate Plants.] An Inter-Departmental Board, consisting of the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Interior, and the Secretary of Agriculture, is hereby organized for the purpose of making the necessary investigations and submitting recommendations relative to the selection of a site or sites. suitable for a plant or plants authorized by section one hundred and twenty-four of the act approved June 3, 1916, to be constructed and operated for the production of nitrates and other products needed for munitions of war and useful in the manufacture of fertilizers and other useful products.

This board will consider, through actual examination thereof or otherwise and with such expedition as may be possible, the suitability