Minister Moncheur to the Secretary of State.
Washington, December 17, 1906.
Mr. Secretary of State: Your excellency was pleased to answer on November 15 the dispatch by which I had the honor to acquaint you with my Government’s proposition to postpone until next spring the last meeting of the Brussels international conference.
Your excellency informed me at the same time that the Secretary of Commerce and Labor, to whom a translation of my dispatch had been transmitted, remarked, with reference to a passage in my dispatch mentioning the United States as one of the Governments that had given the approval to the two drafts of convention, “that his department had no knowledge of such approval having been given by the Government of the United States.”
There seems to be in this some misunderstanding that it is proper to dispel.
[Page 79]The sentence found in my dispatch of the 28th of October, which I had the honor to address to your excellency by direction of the minister of foreign affairs at Brussels did not in any way mean that the Government of the United States had finally adhered to the two drafts of convention under consideration. But inasmuch as your excellency told me in your dispatch of August 2 last that the American Government did not deem a third meeting of the conference necessary, the department of foreign affairs at Brussels thought it could infer therefrom that the Government had no remark to submit concerning the texts drawn up at the second session, and that its adhesion could be secured in principle, subject, of course, to the attitude the other interested States might assume.
Be pleased to accept, etc.,