File No. 838, 111/63.]

The Acting Secretary of State to the American Ambassador to Turkey.

No. 122.

Sir: The Department has received the despatch (No. 138) of February 16th last with which you transmitted a note verbale from the Sublime Porte asking the assistance of this Government in securing from the Government of Haiti the renewal of licenses to retail merchants of Ottoman nationality residing Haiti.

It is suggested that you reply to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, informing him that the Department has given careful and attentive consideration to this request of the Sublime Porte and regrets that it must instruct you to reply that, while this Government is always desirous of cooperating with the Government of the Sublime Porte in every possible way, in view of all the circumstances of the present anti-Syrian agitation in Haiti, and particularly in view of the course which the matter has taken in the discussions between the American Minister at Port-au-Prince and the Haitian authorities, it is reluctantly compelled to believe that it would be impracticable at this time to issue further instructions to the American Minister along the line of the action understood to be desired by the Sublime Porte.

I am [etc.]

Huntington Wilson.

Note.—On April 1, 1912, the message of the President and the report of the Minister for Foreign Affairs were submitted to the Congress (see ante); the latter’s report relates in part to the subject of this correspondence.