812.00/17743
The Acting Secretary of State to President Wilson
My Dear Mr. President: Mr. Arredondo came in this afternoon. I first called his attention to the note from this Department, dated March 13th, which read as follows:26
“The Government of the United States understands that in view of its agreement to this reciprocal arrangement proposed by the de facto Government, the arrangement is now complete and in force and the reciprocal privileges thereunder may accordingly be exercised by either Government without further interchange of views.”
After some hesitation he said these two recent communications covering the proposed agreement was their reply.27 I told him I assumed that this proposed agreement would cover future movements of troops and as to the present expedition, we would do everything we could to conform in general to the terms suggested by him. His reply was that the proposed terms were meant to cover this particular expedition and his suggestion was that the agreement should be made at once and that we could then slowly withdraw our troops so as to meet all the terms,—that is to say, that there should not be more than one thousand troops over the border and that they should not go more than sixty kilometers from the border into Mexico. I told him that this would be difficult, if not impossible, for obvious reasons. His point is that the chances of catching Villa are slight; that our troops may have to venture a great distance into Mexico; that Villa will hide in the mountains, and it will mean a campaign of months in the heart of Mexico. All this will be very dangerous [Page 556] to existing friendly relations. He thought that our troops could not [now?] be secretly withdrawn and the statement then made that Villa had fled into the interior of Mexico. I told him he could tell General Carranza that this Government was most anxious to meet his views in every way possible; that the arrangement proposed would probably be satisfactory to cover all future campaigns, but as to this particular campaign I felt sure that you would wish to have reports showing the progress of this campaign and the chances of success before you could consider reducing the force in Mexico and withdrawing it to the limits suggested. I told him that I would communicate with you and I knew that you would give the matter very careful attention. He said that General Carranza was very anxious for a prompt reply and I told him that we would try to meet his wishes in this connection.
In leaving he again assured me that General Carranza was anxious to do everything he could to maintain friendly relations. This is where the matter now stands.
Yours faithfully,
- Printed in full, ibid., p. 487.↩
- Communications to the Acting Secretary of State, ibid., pp. 493, 495.↩