Mr. Hay to Mr. Storer.
Washington , January 16, 1901.
Sir: The Department has received your No. 363, of December 20, 1900, on the subject of cédulas and passports presented by residents of Porto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippine Islands. Your comprehensive statement of the complications now arising will serve to guide the Department in specific instructions at some future day, and the desirability of such instructions is freely admitted. For the present, however, your course in authenticating the cédulas and passports, when it can not be avoided, is approved, and while the confusion you have described is to be regretted, the Department feels that the wisest course to pursue is to meet each case as it arises and treat it individually with good judgment and discretion. It is not thought that the time is ripe for formulating a general and permanent plan for dealing with the subject.
So far as Cuba is concerned, the status of the inhabitants is still undefined, and, in fact, delegates of the people are now actually in session for the purpose of giving some definite destiny to the island. In the event of the withdrawal of United States authority Cuban passports or documents would be of no concern to the diplomatic representatives of the United States.
As for the Philippine Islands, the existing conditions are of a character that can not, as it would seem, long continue, and legislation by the Congress must be awaited before the Department can issue instructions on the subject of the status of the inhabitants that are certain of any stability.
In Porto Rico a full civil government is in successful operation under the laws of the United States; but, as you are well aware, the Supreme Court of the United States now has before it a case involving the status of the people of that island and of the Philippines, and the Department prefers to await the decision now pending before sending an instruction involving a question at issue before the court.
With reference to the Department’s telegram to you of November [Page 463] 6, 1900, your understanding of it was correct. It was meant to authorize the visé or authentication of cedulas and passports presented by Cubans and Porto Ricans, and by Filipinos when issued or countersigned by the military authorities of the United States in the Philippines.
I am, etc.,