File No. 812.00/1284.
The Secretary of State to the Mexican Chargé d’Affaires.
Washington, April 19, 1911.
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your note of the 9th instant, in which you advise the Department that the authorities of the State of Chihuahua report to the Federal Government of Mexico the constant passing of men and war material from El Paso, Tex., to Guadalupe, and that it is feared that Ciudad Juarez may be attacked by the organization recently formed around that place.
I have the honor to say in reply that copies of your note have been transmitted to the Attorney General and to the Secretary of War for their information and such action, if any, as they may find it necessary to take in order to secure the proper observance of the neutrality laws of the United States.
As indicated in your note, the Government of the United States has every disposition to secure a rigid observance of the provisions of its laws. In this connection, however, the Department feels that it should again take occasion to invite the embassy’s attention to the Department’s notes of January 24 and 28 and February 11, 1911, and the aide memoire of March 24, in which it was pointed out that mere commercial trading in arms and ammunition is forbidden neither by the rules of international law nor by the so-called neutrality statutes of the United States, as has been clearly set forth by the Federal courts in the case of The United States v. Murphy, to which the Mexican embassy was good enough to direct the attention of this Government in its note of January 24.
I have also the honor again to suggest that the passing of men from the United States into Mexico either singly or in unarmed and unorganized groups, unless constituting an expedition or a part of an expedition fitted out from this country can not be regarded as in violation either of the laws of neutrality or of the provisions of the Federal statutes.
Accept, etc.,