File No. 812.00/23477.
The Special Commissioners to the Secretary of State.
We have just returned from Buffalo where we had a four-hour talk with the representatives of the Constitutionalists in which at great length they set out their position.* * * At the end of the long statement of which this is a brief and necessarily hurried summary, they stated, in answer to our specific inquiries, that the Mediators ought to stop attempting to settle internal affairs of Mexico.
We then stated in detail the substance of the plan proposed by the American representatives: that the transfer should be made without recognition of Huerta; that a provisional government, representing Constitutionalist sentiment, should be appointed; that the president should be pledged to carry into effect the agrarian and other reforms; etc. We called their attention to the fact that this would give them, now, all that they could hold at the end of a bloody war and was in effect a present surrender to the Constitutionalists by Huerta.
They insisted that they might be willing to take up the question of surrender with someone outside the mediation with which the United States had nothing to do, but that so far as mediation was concerned they would absolutely decline to receive anything from the Mediators or through the mediation; that they would not accept as a gift anything which the Mediators could give them, even though it was what they were otherwise seeking; that they would not take it “on a silver platter.” They declined to discuss names or propose names for provisional president, saying that no one would be satisfactory that was appointed by the Mediators, even if it was Carranza himself, because anything that came from the Mediators would not be accepted by their party or by the Mexican people.
Their manner was courteous, expressing regret that they should decline what was [offered]in mistaken kindness; but their statement was so explicit, their objection so positive, their spirit so defiant, that we asked them if we were to understand that they were expressing their own views or the views of Carranza. To this they emphatically replied that they were absolutely instructed by Carranza to deliver this as his final answer. We inquired again if they meant this to be accepted as final and to be reported to Washington; they said they did, and that under no consideration would Carranza accept the result of mediation, no matter how far it might be in his favor.