File No. 412.00/28.
The American Ambassador to the Secretary of State.
Mexico , July 7, 1913.
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the Department’s No. 1337, of June 21, 1913, in which I am directed to reopen with the British Minister and the Mexican Foreign Office the question of claims growing out of a successful revolution and those growing out of an unsuccessful one.
While the correspondence had upon this subject with the Mexican Government and with Mr. Stronge, the British Minister, was initiated upon my own responsibility and the position therein taken was taken upon my own responsibility, I was, in the course I pursued, guided solely by a desire to protect a vast and growing array of American claimants whose rights, it appeared to me, would be placed in jeopardy if this Government were able even by inference to establish its right to avoid responsibility for the claims growing out of the revolution against Madero, which was unquestionably the design it had under cover.
The American claims growing out of the revolution against the Madero Government are in number and amount infinitely greater than those growing out of the brief and comparatively peaceful revolution against General Diaz. I should say that the relative [Page 950] losses could best be expressed in the figures 10 to 1. Since the revolution against Madero as such did not succeed, but was followed by a totally unconnected revolution which did succeed, the claims against the Madero revolution would be weakened by the action which the Department desires taken and the claims growing out of the Madero revolution would not be strengthened at all. These two classes of claims must now be added to the claims growing out of the revolution against General Huerta, which can not yet be defined as those occasioned by a successful or unsuccessful revolution. Having these considerations in mind and also the circumstance that we are insisting that all American claims shall be assigned to the judgment of an international claims commission, I cannot, unless the Department shall see fit to reiterate these instructions, assume the responsibility of hazarding, by what appears to be an unnecessary discussion, the rights of a vast majority of the American claimants.
I have [etc.]