File No. 412.00/14.
The Acting Secretary of State to the American Ambassador.
Washington, September 22, 1911.
If you consider the information sent in your September 20, 8 p.m., to be well founded, you will immediately address a note to the [Page 942] Foreign. Office in the sense you suggest. Regarding reports of confusion of American claimants, the statement incorporated in Department’s No. 518, August 31, should have sufficiently advised claimants regarding the presentation of claims to the Commission. Positive direction to present claims is unnecessary, as the Mexican Government may of right set up a tribunal to hear claimants; and it is impracticable because of the Department’s lack of information as to whether the Commission’s awards would be generally acceptable as doing substantial justice. You should furnish such information as soon as possible.
If you find the Commission making just and equitable decisions, and that insufficient time remains to enable the rest of the American claimants to present claims, and if the Foreign Office is then interrogated as proposed by you, add to such inquiry the statement that if the Mexican Government’s views accord with those of the President of the Commission, it would seem fruitless further to resort to the Commission, and accordingly this Government will be obliged to take up American claims diplomatically, unless some other tribunal shall be promptly formed or empowered to consider on their merits alien claims arising from the recent disturbances; that if, however, the Mexican Government does not concur in the view of the President of the Commission, and foreign and Mexican claims are to be treated on the same basis, then this Government must request that the term of the Commission be extended so as to permit all American claimants to present their claims, it having been impossible heretofore for all of them to do so because of the unsettled conditions in Mexico that still exist.
But if you find the work of the Commission unsatisfactory by reason of generally unjust or inequitable awards or because of discrimination, you will then address the Foreign Office, stating the reported position of the President of the Commission, and that this Government can not under the circumstances consider the Commission as a proper tribunal for passing upon foreign claims, and that before taking up claims, diplomatically the Department desires to know whether the Mexican Government contemplates the establishment of an adequate tribunal.