The Acting Secretary of State to the Chilean Minister.
Washington, August 29, 1908.
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your note of the 31st ultimo, transmitting a copy of a note which the minister of foreign relations of Chile addressed to the American minister at Santiago on April 9 last, regarding the claim of Alsop & Co.
The inclosed report from the Chilean foreign office will receive full consideration by this department.
The department is pleased to observe in your courteous offer to furnish this department with antecedents and information regarding this case, that spirit of equity and justice which should characterize the intercourse of two sovereign powers, and desires to extend to you its assurances that it has no other wish than, to secure a fair and honorable adjustment of this long-standing difficulty. To the end that it may be in a position to arrange for such a settlement, the department has recently undertaken again to examine, elaborately and carefully, the whole history of the claim with a view to securing a definite understanding of its merits. In the course of this examination, now almost completed, it has observed that the sum offered by Chile in settlement of the Alsop claim not only fails to include an amount to cover the interest that was stipulated for in the agreement between Mr. Wheelwright and the Bolivian Government, but that the sum is less, by a large amount, than the mere principal of the debt which Bolivia in that same agreement acknowledged to be lawfully and legally due. The department has found nothing in its own archives which appears to justify any such reduction of the amount due under that agreement, and for this reason presumes that it has not before it all of the evidence upon which your Government relies for its guidance. Therefore, animated by a desire to make as to this matter no request which equity and justice does not support, the department is pleased to avail itself of your courteous offer to furnish to it antecedents and information regarding the case, and respectfully requests that your procure for it, as soon as your convenience will permit, copies of the documents and statements of the evidence which your Government regards as justifying the reduction which it proposes.
Accept, etc.