File No. 839.00/998.
The Minister of the Dominican Republic to the Secretary of State.
Washington, December 8, 1913.
Mr. Secretary: In accordance with your desire, I have the honor to ratify by this communication the declarations that I made to you verbally in our interview of yesterday.
[Here follows verbatim the memorandum of December 6, with the first paragraph omitted.]
To the foregoing statement permit me, Mr. Secretary, to add the following:
My Government does not seek to avoid public acknowledgment of its acts, much less to evade any opportunity of demonstrating its disposition to fulfill religiously its promise of holding free elections in my country; therefore the present occasion does not call for either an indication of distrust of its intention to execute its promises or an attempt to belittle the independence of the Dominican people. But I believe that the sending of commissioners from the [Page 445] Department of State cannot secure the information desired by the Department, because of the inability of those commissioners supervising all the polling-places embraced in the sixty electoral districts; and doubtless it will serve to encourage professional revolutionists who, besides spreading the impression that this step is an evidence that the Department of State has lost confidence in President Bordas, will also make the public believe that he has consented to a fresh derogation of our sovereignty.
This point of view of President Bordas, and the attitude which he consequently feels obliged to take, do not in any degree spring from hostility toward the people and Government of the United States. His friendly disposition toward them is daily shown in the various acts of his administration and especially in the frank resolution with which he executes in all its clauses the Dominican-American Convention of 1907. But in his capacity as Chief Magistrate of the Republic he is the exponent of the sentiment of all citizens of the Dominican Republic, who, if disposed fully to carry out the terms of that convention and kindly to receive such inspirations arising therefrom as benefit their civilization and welfare, regard all increase of foreign power in their country with the same dismay as that felt by a cripple who, using one crutch, contemplates the menaced amputation of his good foot so as to require the use of two.
For these reasons, and because your Department has confirmed to me the news in today’s papers that the said commissioners have sailed for Santo Domingo, I fulfill in this note the instructions given me to protest for my Government in behalf of the Dominican people against this step, as without cause, unnecessary, useless and counteractive.
I avail [etc.]