File No. 882.51/418.
The Acting Secretary of State to the Chargé d’Affaires of the French Republic.
Washington, September 11, 1912.
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your note of the 19th of July, wherein the Department is informed that the Government of France readily concurs in the views of the Government [Page 688] of the United States in regard to acquiescence in the assignment at the present time of the German Receiver of Customs to duty at Monrovia.
I find it difficult, however, to share the present impression which the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs appears to have formed that either in spirit or in substance this present disposition is susceptible of interpretation as any departure from that substantial basis of equal cooperation upon which the Governments of the French Republic, of Germany and of Great Britain have joined their invaluable support to that of the United States in its effort to respond to its traditional relation to the Republic of Liberia.
I may be permitted to advert to the previous effective efforts of the United States to influence Liberia toward removing all causes of frontier inconvenience to France and to invite your attention to the resultant careful frontier delimitation so recently made by your own and the Liberian Governments, and understood to be satisfactory to all concerned.1
As to pourparlers, which you are good enough to inform me had been initiated at Paris upon bases indicated by the representative of Liberia, the Government of the United States trusts that with the recent appointment by Liberia of three former Army officers of the United States for the reorganization of the frontier police, and with funds from the new loan so near at hand for the carrying on of this work, disturbances along the boundary and the consequent inconvenience will disappear.
The Department would, moreover, be surprised to find the view seriously entertained that territorial compensation would be a proportionate counterpoise to a matter of no graver import than the present location of the respective Receivers. Furthermore, owing to the extreme importance of the prompt and speedy operation of the receivership, this Government would greatly deprecate the raising of any further questions of frontier rectification at this time. I need, in conclusion, hardly assure you that this Government, at some later date and with the opportunity for full knowledge of all the facts and circumstances, would be not averse to a discussion of the question whether any further rectification of the Franco-Liberian boundary would be equitable and reasonable and consequently fair to Liberia, in case the situation in that territory should reveal any conditions substantially detrimental.
As to the preference of your Government to having the French Receiver of Customs stationed at the post nearest the Franco-Liberian boundary, I can assure you that if such plan should meet with the acquiescence of the other Governments concerned and should give rise to no valid objection now unforeseen either on the part of the Liberian Government or on the part of those responsible for the efficiency of the receivership, the Government of the United States would be most happy to find in this further matter another opportunity to give its support to something regarded as desirable by the Government of the French Republic.
Counting upon you to assure the Government of France of the great importance attached by the Government of the United States to the prompt operation of the receivership, I avail [etc.]