812.00/15285½
President Wilson to the Secretary of State ad interim
My Dear Mr. Secretary: I have been feeling, the past twenty-four hours or so, that it was possible we were not using all the influences we might use in Mexico to guide what is taking place there.
Would it be possible to find some direct but unofficial channel through which we could convey to General Carranza this impression:
That it was within the possibilities that we might recognize him, as things are now apparently shaping themselves,—at any rate that that possibility was not excluded by anything we had yet determined upon,—but that he need not expect us to consider that course seriously unless he went the full length of conciliation and conference with all factions with a view to the accommodation upon which the opinion of the whole world now insists. He cannot in our view afford to insist upon establishing his own dominion unless he first makes a genuine effort to unite all groups and parties.
Cordially Yours,