File No. 763.72111/1336
The Secretary of State to the British Ambassador (Spring Rice)2
Washington, January 13, 1915.
No. 610]
Excellency: In your note No. 380 of November 7 last,2 you bring to the Department’s attention the complaint of your Government, made to the Government of Ecuador, that the Galápagos Islands [Page 709] were being used as a base of operations by German men-of-war; and you state that the Ecuadorian Government had, itself, informed His Britannic Majesty’s Chargé d’Affaires at Quito that German men-of-war in the Pacific Ocean were converting the Galápagos Islands into a naval base and had landed there the crews of the British ships which they had sunk.
In a note dated the 3d ultimo, the Minister of Ecuador, after referring to interviews which he had with me on December 1st and 2d, on the general subject of the neutrality of the American countries during the present European war, said:
I likewise desire to put on record the explanation I offered to your excellency of the manner in which the words of the Minister for Foreign Relations of Ecuador spoken at an interview with the Chargé d’Affaires of Great Britain at Quito had been distorted in London. And as the explanation was founded on a cablegram I received on the 30th of November last from the Minister for Foreign Relations of my Government, I deem it proper to state its substance hereinbelow:
Upon a statement of the American Minister that the Ambassadors of France and Great Britain complained of Germany’s using some of the Galápagos Islands for a naval base, I declared to the British Chargé d’Affaires that our Government had no knowledge of what was supposed to have occurred in the Galápagos, for want of communications; I may perhaps have given him some indication that I feared some infringement of our neutrality might have been consummated by any one of the nations at war on account of the lack of Ecuadorian forces in the archipelago; but I never asserted that Germany had made actual use of the Galápagos as a naval base. This the British Chargé d’Affaires admits and he so declared to me to-day. On the other hand I persist in asserting that there has been no wireless communication of any kind in our country in the cause of any one of the belligerents. Deny through the press any false report that may in any way hurt the good name of Ecuador and the propriety of its proceedings in the present European war.
In his second note, dated December 25, 1914, the Ecuadorian Minister says:
The Minister for Foreign Relations of Ecuador has cabled me that the commission which was sent to the Colon Archipelago (Galápagos) has returned and reported that no violation of neutrality was committed on the said Ecuadorian Islands.
So we have reached the following final conclusions:
- (a)
- Ecuador has neither permitted nor witnessed any violation of neutrality within its territory.
- (b)
- Therefore the charges directly or indirectly brought against Ecuador on that score have been found to be groundless, as my Government through its chancelleries averred from the moment the thing was made public.
I have [etc.]