File No. 442.11G93/772.
The Minister of Ecuador to the Secretary of State.
Washington, March 13, 1915.
Mr. Secretary: In accordance with the agreement reached with your excellency at our interview of the 4th instant, I had the pleasure of talking over the matter with Mr. William Heimke, Chief of the Latin-American Division, to whom I have begun giving brief information concerning the Guayaquil & Quito Railway Building and Operating Company in Ecuador.
As that was the first opportunity I had had to discuss the matter with the learned Mr. Heimke, I began with a statement that it did not come into the class of international or diplomatic questions, and that while the Department of State and the Ecuadorian Legation frequently deal with the case, it is because the railway building contract stipulates arbitration, in accordance with the law of Ecuador, and under that contract the President of the United States and that of Ecuador (or their appointees if they are unable to agree or accept the office) were designated as arbitrators to settle every difference between the contracting parties.
I also told Mr. Heimke that the railway company should be called upon for a copy of the by-laws by which it was governed until 1909 and those that have been framed since that date up to the present, repealing or amending the original ones; and that the company [Page 342] or the official concerned, should, in sending the copy, report upon or certify the following points:
- (a)
- The board or corporation which drew up or amended every one of the by-laws.
- (b)
- The dates and places when and where that was done by the board.
- (c)
- The names of stockholders, directors or their attorneys who attended the sessions of the said boards and, in particular, of those who represented the interests of Ecuador.
- (d)
- The office in which are at present filed the journals and documents relating thereto.
As I also offered to Mr. Heimke, in the act of ratifying my conference, to send him a copy of the report prepared by the Ecuadorian arbitrator, Dr. don Alfredo Baquerizo Moreno, I do so by enclosing herein a duly certified copy of the said report. But as it is fair and necessary that my Government should, for its part, know the report submitted to your excellency’s Department by Arbitrator A. L. Miller, I beg your excellency to direct that a copy of that report be delivered to me.
I deem it proper to say to your excellency that all the other papers referred to by the arbitrator are filed in the archives of your Department as well as in those of the Department of Public Works of Ecuador.
I avail [etc.]