File No. 812.00/987.
The Secretary of State to the Mexican Ambassador.
The Department of State has the honor to acknowledge the receipt of the memorandum of the Embassy of Mexico of the 17th instant, transmitting for communication to the Department of Justice [Page 435] a letter written by Abraham González at El Paso, Tex., in regard to the movements of Mexican insurgents near Juárez and Casas Grandes, and has copied the memorandum and its Inclosure to the Attorney General for his information and such action, if any, as he may deem it proper and advisable to take.
In connection with the suggestions in the embassy’s memorandum the Department feels however that it should remark that it is almost certain that the acts of which complaint is made by the embassy do not constitute any infringement whatsoever of the American neutrality statutes, so called, and that it will not be possible to base any criminal prosecution upon the information which the embassy sets forth.
Moreover, while the matter is not wholly germane to the present communication, it might be remarked that such an action as is reported could scarcely be regarded as a violation of the principles of international law, as those principles were enunciated in the convention regarding the rights and duties of neutral powers and persons in cases of war on land, which was signed at The Hague in 1907.
Washington, March 25, 1911.