File No. 419.11D29/82.
I shall report duly further developments.
[Inclosure.]
Minister Price to the Secretary for
Foreign Affairs.
No. 146.]
American Legation,
Panama,
March 12, 1915.
Excellency: I have the honor to inform
your excellency that the Department of State of my Government
having throughout the past closely followed the case of the
Cocoa Grove affair of July 4, 1912, and continuing to take the
earnest interest in same which the grievous events of that
occasion would naturally inspire, and having duly considered the
more recent notes exchanged between your excellency’s office and
mine of the respective numbers and dates of No. 119 of January
25, 1915, and No. S–5606 of February 4, 1915, now instructs me
specifically to communicate to the Government of your
excellency’s Republic through your excellency that my Government
has patiently waited much more than a reasonable to me for the
termination of the court inquiries in this matter and is
reluctantly forced to the conclusion that same are being
deliberately delayed.
I have the honor to advise your excellency that I have been
reliably informed that an opinion herein by Judge Saturnino L.
Perigault was delivered only about ten days ago for action
thereon by the Superior Court Judge, whose decision pursuant
thereto should in due course have been handed down within four
days thereafter; that there exists after the delivery of the
decision last named the possibility of another passing back and
forth of decisions between these courts, with the final
accomplishment of a successful prosecution of any one guilty of
the crimes committed more than two and a half years ago even
then still in doubt.
The Department of State of my Government is in possession, also,
of this information, and further instructs me specifically to
say that unless the final action of all courts concerned in said
inquiry shall be announced within, the next two weeks my
Government will be confirmed in the conclusion reluctantly
formed, as above stated, and will therefore be forced to the
conviction that the Republic of Panama does not desire to do
justice in the matter of inflicting punishment upon those guilty
of the crimes committed upon American citizens so long ago as
July 4, 1912.
While month after month was passing with this case suffering
apparent neglect and seeming intentional putting aside by
authorities of your excellency’s Government, there have
continued the insistent efforts of my Government, which the
record herein so fully discloses, and there have been repeated
more than once the warnings which the recent outbreak on
February 14 shows were so pertinent. The investigation into this
last deplorable affair has proceeded sufficiently to justify the
Department of State of my Government to feel convinced that the
main body of the Panaman police force involved on this last
occasion indulged in excesses, and further to indulge the
presumption that same might not have occurred if your
excellency’s Government had visited appropriate punishment upon
the policemen involved in these 4th of July, 1912, outrages.
[Page 1169]
In this connection I desire to incorporate herein the following
paragraph from my Foreign Office note No. 68 of June 9, 1914:
It is believed that it will be considered beyond debate,
also, that the ability to maintain order consists not
alone in the restoral of quiet after a debacle of
passion, but also in the visitation of punishment upon
those involved so swiftly and so severely that they
themselves and others will be given such warning and’
restraint thereby that like violations of the laws of
God and man will not be repeated and intimate and
affectionate feelings between two Governments wounded
and subjected to strain.
In other words, needed measures in dealing with offenses of this
kind are those of prevention as well as redress, and the Panaman
Government, by its failure to adopt such measures of prevention,
is charged now all the more heavily with a large degree of
responsibility for whatever excesses the policemen may have
indulged in upon the recent deplorable outbreak.
Respectfully soliciting the attention to the importance to which
this communication attains, and to the firmness of resolve of my
Government, which has given expression to the specific
instructions herein which I have been charged so emphatically to
communicate to your excellency’s Government,
I avail [etc.]
