File No. 422.11G93/771.
The Minister of Ecuador to the Secretary of State.
Washington, February 9, 1915.
Mr. Secretary: Mr. James C. Hallock, an American engineer, assistant chief of the department of public works of the city of Newark, and Señor Carlos Dávalos, an Ecuadorian in the service of the American Exporter, who are the two members chosen by Ecuador at the general meeting of shareholders for the election of the board of directors of the Guayaquil & Quito Railway Company, sent me, on the 5th instant, a report which includes the following:
At the monthly meeting of February 2 the proceedings of the executive committee at its meeting of Saturday the 16th of January of this year were made known and were as follows: Authorize the vice president, Mr. Farr, to write to the Department of State of the United States asking it to protest through its diplomatic agent to the Government of Ecuador against its applying part of its receipts to payments to the banks instead of meeting its obligations entered into with the company to which those receipts had been assigned. Mr. Hallock said that there was no occasion whatever to apply to the Department of State in the matter and that the company should always arrive at a direct understanding with the Government of Ecuador.
I do not know whether the communication approved in the aforesaid executive committee has yet been forwarded to your excellency, but, knowing as I do the superior judgment with which your excellency usually discriminates and decides which public business belongs to the province of diplomacy and which relates to the ordinary transactions of operators and contractors, I indulge the belief that your excellency will have answered Mr. Farr’s application as it deserves and spurned the idea that the Guayaquil & Quito Railway Company is ever to make diplomatic questions of every matter that can well be settled directly with my Government or in the courts the case arising.
Should your excellency deem it expedient to talk over this matter personally with me, I should be glad to have an interview with your excellency on any day and at any hour you may be pleased to appoint.
May your excellency [etc.]