File No. 837.6112/25.
The Secretary of State to the American Consul General.
Washington, January 11, 1913.
Sir: The Department is in receipt of your despatch No. 674, of November 20th last,1 enclosing a report by you on the matter of the proposed concession to the Compañía Agricultora de Zapata. Your No. 675, of November 23rd,1 making an amendment to the report, has also been received.
[Page 367]An instruction was sent to Minister Beaupré on the 11th instant, informing him that Mr. Champion, on behalf of the company, has stated that the company is willing and proposes to attempt to have the concession contract amended by the inclusion of new provisions in effect as follows: [as in the foregoing instruction to the Minister.]
Mr. Beaupré was further informed that as these proposed amendments seem, according to the information now before the Department, to obviate the principal criticisms of the measure hitherto made, their incorporation in the concession law and contract would serve to remove the Department’s objections1 to the project communicated to the Cuban Government at the time of the issuance of the Executive Decree of June 18, 1912; and he was instructed to address a note to the Cuban Foreign Office in the sense of the aforegoing.
Mr. Champion has been informed of this present position of the Department in this matter and the observation was made to him that this attitude of the Department should not, of course, be taken or used as an endorsement by the Government of the United States of the project as a commercial enterprise.
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