File No. 812.00/12429.
Special Agent Canova to the Secretary of State.
General Carranza has requested me to communicate to you the reason why the Constitutionalists consider the acceptance of the plan proposing Provisional President inadvisable. He declares that it would be tantamount to compounding felony for it would be a makeshift which would promise only unstable peace and insure another revolution as it did when Madero consented to De la Barra’s becoming Provisional President. He declares that certain reforms can be successfully accomplished only when they are approached as they were by Juarez at Vera Cruz while the country was under revolutionary military rule pending elections when the Government by decree permitted immediate inauguration reforms which if submitted to Congress would have resulted in interminable discussion and assured defeat. A provisional president would necessarily have to convene Congress as it is now constituted in order to even attempt to adopt reforms, and such effort would be labor wasted.
A memorandum of the reforms deemed urgent is being prepared and will be mailed to you in a few days. Pie declared that in order to accept such a plan a conference of army officials must assemble to amend the Plan of Guadalupe which provides that when the Mexican capital has been captured the chief of the army will assume executive power only for the time necessary to call elections to name his successor. All the Constitutionalist generals have been consulted and all except Obregon division, who have not been heard from, have expressed themselves against the plan.
[Page 559]He declared that if arms and ammunition can be obtained through Tampico so he can distribute them to the different divisions of the army he will assuredly be at the capital in a short time and will guarantee establishment of peace upon a firm basis and not on the quicksands of a transaction where no guaranties could be given.