§ COLONEL HOWARD VINCENTI beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if it is a fact that Lord Rosebery and Her Majesty's Government authorised the British Minister and senior naval officer at Rio de Janeiro to associate themselves last October with their foreign colleagues in preventing the threatened bombardment of the business quarter of Rio de Janeiro, replete with British interests, and that all foreign nations, with the exception of Germany, joined in the action thus initiated by Great Britain and saved the city from material damage?
§ SIR E. GREYAt the suggestion of Her Majesty's Government instructions were given to the naval commanders at Rio of France, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and the United States to concert with the British naval commander measures to prevent the ships of the Brazilian insurgents from destroying the lives and property of foreigners at Rio, and Rear Admiral de Mello, who threatened to bombard the town, was warned that any attack on the city would be prevented by the ships of those Powers by force if necessary. The German Government considered such action on the part of foreign naval commanders as incompatible with the attitude of strict neutrality which Germany desired to maintain, and the German naval commander did not join in the intimation made to M. de Mello.