File No. 312.51/44.
The French Ambassador to the Secretary of State.
Washington , June 20, 1914 .
Mr. Secretary of State: I received yesterday a letter140 signed by two French priests and a Spanish one in which they give an account of the treatment recently undergone by them at Saltillo. On the same day the two French clergymen, Messrs. Quillere and Lagree, both professors of the School of Theology of that city, called at the Embassy and I had a chance to ask them questions. They used moderate language and struck me as expressing a dispassionate judgment of the conditions of the country from which they have just been expelled under specially hard circumstances.
They told me they did not have a word to change in their letter which is true in every particular and had no objection to my forwarding copies to your excellency and my Government which will send me such instructions as it deems suitable in the case. The parties concerned have filed with me an indemnity claim for the wrong done them but, likewise with their assent, I shall for the present defer taking action on their request.
The facts stated by the signers seem to me to be worthy in every respect of your excellency’s attention. It appears therefrom that while the priests were subjected by the Federal mounted police to very harsh treatment (extortion under threats of death,) that inflicted by General Villa and his lieutenants was still worse. The scene described by the victims as taking place during the night of May 25th and 26th last in the house where the clergymen were confined and where Colonel Fierro simulated the execution of every one of them, called out separately, in order to constrain those who were left to pay a million pesos they did not possess, will certainly be held by your excellency to be barbarous beyond description.
Stripped of all their belongings, my unfortunate countrymen, whose pockets had even been carefully emptied by the officers of the Constitutional power, were finally expelled by the Torreon-El Paso route, partly in cattle cars and in the custody of drunken officers.
As I was offering pertinent suggestions yesterday as to shipping their baggage to New York where they were to take ship this morning for France, they said, for good and sufficient reason, “we have none.”
Your excellency will surely understand the painful impression the account of the expelled men is bound to create in France and the apprehensions that may be aroused in my Government as well as in any other having its nationals in Mexico, the prospect of the Constitutionalist troops occupying other towns. These occurrences have all the greater claim to your excellency’s notice as the complainants [Page 868] were supplied with a certificate in Spanish signed by Messrs. Silliman, Consul of the United States at Saltillo, and MacMillan, British Consul, which stated, in accordance with the facts, that the bearers “of French nationality had never in any way meddled in the political affairs of the country.” General Villa refused to pay any attention to that paper, saying, ironically no doubt, as there seemed to be no foundation for the statement, “that he could not read.” As to the wording of that answer, which the two French priests repeated to me in Spanish, they assured me there could be no doubt.
In view of the very trying crisis now prevailing in Mexico and of the desire so often and so strongly manifested by the President of the United States and your excellency that peace be restored there, it occurs to me that all elements of information supplied by creditable eye-witnesses must be of special value to the American Government. I therefore do not hesitate to let your excellency have these, feeling quite sure that you will take care that it is not used, in any event, to the injury of those who furnished it or of their fellow citizens in Mexico.
Be pleased to accept [etc.]
- Not printed.↩