Mr. Hart to Mr. Hay.
Washington, June 10, 1902.
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of the Department’s communication of May 31, 1902, in regard to the complaint of the Swiss citizen, Robert Beck, and inclosing copy of a memorandum left with the Secretary of State by the Swiss minister, in which the Government of the United States is asked to make representations to the Colombian Government in Beck’s behalf, and in which the Department asks for a more complete report regarding the case and the action taken by me than that contained in my dispatch No. 573, of February 25, 1902.
There is little, if anything, to add to my No. 573, in which I had the honor to advise the Department that “I have done all I could to aid him (Beck) by the use of good offices, but it appears that my inability to accomplish the impossible has displeased him.”
The fact is that I have given to Beck all the assistance in the way of good offices that I could possibly have given to any American citizen, and I have been unable to secure the payment of his claim for the same reasons that have made it impossible to secure the payment of claims of citizens of the United States whose beasts have been expropriated as were the mules of the Swiss citizen, Robert Beck.
It is well to add that in the use of good offices it will be no more practicable to put an end to the expropriation of Mr. Beck’s mules than it has been by like endeavor to put an end to the expropriation of mules and other property of citizens of the United States.
I have, etc.,