File No. 312.51/100.
The French Ambassador to the Secretary of State.
Washington, November 12, 1914.
Mr. Secretary of State: Referring to the oral indications furnished by me of late to the Department of State, I have the honor to confirm to your excellency that my Government’s attention has been drawn to the trying situation in which the National Bank of Mexico is now placed by the inimical policy toward it adopted by the new Mexican Government which seems to aim at the eventual suppression or liquidation of that bank.
Established in 1882 with the cooperation of a group of Frenchmen of finance, the National Bank was granted important privileges by a law of the Mexican Congress. So this is not the case of a bank governed by the general law of Mexico, but that of an institution which, having been granted a charter, occupies a position that is entitled to respect more than any other. Now among the unfriendly acts of the Mexican authorities certain Custom Houses have notably been ordered to stop depositing customs receipts with the Bank, although the Congress, by laws regularly passed, entrusted that establishment with the collection of the duties of that class that are set apart for the service of the loans of 1899, 5%, of 1910, 4%, and the Treasury Bonds of 1913, 6%.
A large quantity of the stock of the National Bank capitalized at 32,000,000 pesos and whose shares of a face value of 100 pesos were never quoted at less than 900 francs from 1905 until 1911 and some times were considerably higher than that figure is owned by French holders. That is why I am asked by the Government of the Republic to bring to your excellency’s notice the trying position in which the institution has been placed and to ask of you to support the protests which the Chargé d’Affaires of the Republic in Mexico has been directed to lodge with General Carranza’s Government. Be pleased [etc.]