File No. 812.00/3194.
The Mexican Ambassador to the Acting Secretary of State.
Washington, March 11, 1912.
Excellency: In compliance with instructions received by telegraph from the Department of Foreign Relations of my country, I have the honor to say to your excellency that the Government of Mexico is making energetic efforts, with every means at its command, to suppress the revolutionary movement of the low classes of the country, the only ones that Emilio Vázquez Gómez has succeeded in stirring up from San Antonio, Tex., for the great majority of public opinion has no desire but the earliest restoration of peace. If the agitation has found any echo, chiefly among a portion of the [Page 744] people of the State of Chihuahua, it is clue solely to the ease with which arms, munitions, and war material can be obtained from private persons in this country, find their way into Ciudad Juarez, and fall into the hands of the said rebels, no way having yet been found to stop that trade. The result is that while the Mexican Government is concerning itself, as in duty bound, with the tranquillity of the country and all its inhabitants, among whom are a number of citizens of the United States, and with looking after the inviolability of the property belonging to each one, those who rebel against its authority easily obtain from this country all the elements necessary to inflict direct or indirect injury upon the residents of Mexican territory.
It is to be deplored that the neutrality laws of this country do not duly answer their purposes, because there are many important points they do not cover; but this does not and can not afford sufficient ground for the Government and people of the United States, great and good friends of Mexico, not to take any measure calculated to prevent the consummation of acts which, like those above pointed out, come within the province of international duties. The United States, through its Secretary of State Hamilton Fish, said to the British Minister Motley (7 Moore’s International Law Digest, 1015): “No sovereign power can rightfully plead the defects of its own domestic penal statutes as justification or extenuation of an international wrong to another sovereign power.”
Wherefore, invoking the same principle laid down by this country when it found itself in a similar case, it is to be hoped, and the Government of my country has warrant to hope, that measures will be ordered by this country’s Government, of which your excellency forms part, intended to prevent the continuance of the acts above noted, in view of the cordiality and good friendly relations existing between the two countries.
Awaiting your honorable answer, I have [etc.]