File No. 817.00/1940b.
The Acting Secretary of State to the American Minister.
Washington, September 4, 1912—7 p.m.
Unless a different course appears to you preferable—in which case you will telegraph your suggestions—you may communicate to the Government of Nicaragua the text of the following as the authorized declaration of the policy of the United States in the present disturbances. You may also communicate it unofficially to the rebel leaders, and make it public:
The policy of the Government of the United States in the present Nicaraguan disturbances is to take the necessary measures for an adequate legation guard at Managua, to keep open communications, and to protect American life and property.
In discountenancing Zelaya, whose régime of barbarity and corruption was ended by the Nicaraguan nation after a bloody war, the Government of the United States opposed not only the individual but the system, and this Government could not countenance any movement to restore the same destructive regime. The Government of the United States will, therefore, discountenance any revival of Zelayaism and will lend its strong moral support to the cause of legally constituted good government for the benefit of the people of Nicaragua, whom it has long sought to aid in their just aspiration toward peace and prosperity under constitutional and orderly government.
A group of some 125 American planters residing in one region in Nicaragua have applied for protection. Some two dozen American firms doing business in that country have applied for protection. The American bankers who have made investments in relation to railroads and steamships in Nicaragua, in connection with a plan for the relief of the financial distress of that country, have applied for protection. The American citizens now in the service of the Government of Nicaragua and the Legation itself have been placed in actual jeopardy under fire. Two wounded American citizens are reported to have been ruthlessly slaughtered. Besides the Emery claim due American citizens and the indemnity for the killing of Groce and Cannon in the Zelaya war, there are various American claims and concessionary interests. Under the Washington conventions, the United States has a moral mandate to exert its influence I for the preservation of the general peace of Central America, which is seriously menaced by the present uprising, and to this end in the strict enforcement of the Washington conventions and loyal support of their aims and purposes all the Central American Republics will find means of valuable cooperation. These are among the important moral, political, and material interests to be protected.
When the American Minister called upon the Government of Nicaragua to protect American life and property, the Minister for Foreign Affairs replied that the Government troops must be used to put down the rebellion, adding: “In consequence, my Government desires that the Government of the United [Page 1044] States guarantee with its forces security for the property of American citizens in Nicaragua, and that they extend this protection to all the inhabitants of the Republic.”
In this situation the policy of the Government of the United States will be to protect the life and property of its citizens in the manner indicated and, meanwhile, to contribute its influence in all appropriate ways to the restoration of lawful and orderly government in order that Nicaragua may resume its program of reforms unhampered by the vicious elements who would restore the methods of Zelaya.
The revolt of General Mena in flagrant violation of his solemn promises to his own Government and to the American Minister, and of the Dawson agreement by which he was solemnly bound, and his attempt to overturn the Government of his country for purely selfish purposes and without even the pretense of contending for a principle, make the present rebellion in origin the most inexcusable in the annals of Central America. The nature and methods of the present disturbances, indeed, place them in the category of anarchy rather than ordinary revolution. The reported character of those who promptly joined Mena, together with his uncivilized and savage action in breaking armistices, maltreating messengers, violating his word of honor, torturing peaceable citizens to exact contributions, and, above all, in the ruthless bombardment of the city of Managua, with the deliberate destruction of innocent life and property and the killing of women and children and the sick in hospitals, and the cruel and barbarous slaughter of hundreds reported, at León, give to the Mena revolt the attributes of the abhorrent and intolerable Zelaya régime.