Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, With the Annual Message of the President Transmitted to Congress December 6, 1910

The Acting Secretary of State to the Argentine Chargé.¹

Department of State,
Washington, July 28, 1910.

My Dear Mr. Chargé d’Affaires: Inasmuch as at the suggestion of the Brazilian Government, with the acquiescence of the Government of the Argentine Republic, it was deemed best as a matter of convenience that the present phase of the negotiations connected with the tripartite mediation should be centralized in this Capital, the duty of seeking the adoption of the protocol presented on behalf of the three Governments has devolved upon yourself, your Brazilian colleague, and the department, it is thus very necessary that we should be in close touch and mutually fully informed in order that through you I may know the views of your Government as they develop, and in order that your Government, in return, may be, through you, fully informed of the views of the United States. I am therefore depending absolutely upon you to these ends.

You will recall that on the occasion of our conference at Washington, when we formally presented the protocol to the representatives of Ecuador and Peru on behalf of the three mediating powers, I read you the instructions the department was then sending to its representatives at Quito, Lima, and Santiago. You will recall that the general purport of those instructions was as follows:

The representatives of the United States of America were to urge the adoption of the protocol upon the foreign offices of Ecuador and Peru, and were to urge the Government of Chile to work to the same end through the special influence of its legation at Quito. The action upon the instruction sent was, you will recall, contingent upon the receipt of similar instruction by the representatives of your Government and of Brazil. I had understood that you and Mr. Lima, in reporting to your Governments upon our last conference, would also make clear the above understanding. I found, however, that I failed to make myself entirely understood upon this point. Discovering this, the cooperation upon which our action depended was promptly secured through appropriate communication to your Government through the legation at Buenos Aires. Since that time my letter of July 21 will have informed you of the situation as known to the department up to that date.

Since July 21 I am informed that as as a result of cooperative action at Santiago the Chilean minister for foreign affairs, after reading the draft protocol, instructed the Chilean minister at Quito that he saw no objection to the protocol and that he (the minister) was to urge the Government of Ecuador to accept it. A telegram received to-day from our legation at Quito now states confidentially that the Ecuadorean Government is preparing radical changes in the draft, embodying their objections as previously stated, presumably expressing their objection to the provision as to any contingency of a Spanish award.

This situation, together with the resignation of the prime minister and the minister for foreign affairs of Peru, apparently the only members of the Peruvian Cabinet who were not wholly in favor of the protocol, is reported, as is also the fact that the cabinet is being reorganized and is likely to be unanimously in favor of the protocol.

I inclose a copy of a note I have sent the Spanish minister in pursuance of our agreement that he should be informed of any developments in the situation so closely affecting his Government.

I am, etc.,

Huntington Wilson.

P. S.—I beg to inclose for your further information a paraphrase of a telegram just received from Mr. Fox, our minister at Quito.

1. Mutatis Mutandis to the Brazilian chargé.