File No. 422.11G93/825.
On the evening of October 19, 1915, note No. 212 from the Minister for
Foreign Affairs, in answer to my No. 154 of October 13, 1915, was
delivered at the Legation, and I inclose herewith copies thereof,
together with translation. On October 20, 5 p.m., I informed the
Department by telegraph of the receipt of said note. Upon Mr. Norton’s
return to Quito on October 28, we had an interview, and as a result
thereof I sent my telegram to the Department at ten o’clock on the
morning of said day.
The Department will doubtless recall that the Minister for Foreign
Affairs has on two prior occasions, in his official notes, raised the
question of the right of the United States to deal diplomatically with
the differences existing between the Government of Ecuador and the
Guayaquil & Quito Railway Company, and that this Legation has
transmitted copies of such notes to the Department.
I particularly invite the attention of the Department to the portion of
the note of the Minister for Foreign Affairs herewith inclosed wherein
he refers to a note No. 18 addressed by the Secretary of State to the
Ecuadorian Minister at Washington under date of May 12, 1915, from which
he makes a rather extended quotation.
[Inclosure—Extract—Translation.]
The Minister for Foreign
Relations to Minister Hartman.
No. 212.]
Ministry for Foreign Affairs,
Quito,
October 19, 1915.
Mr. Minister: I have the honor to
acknowledge receipt of your excellency’s note No. 154 dated the 13th
instant.
Therein your excellency informs me [etc.]
I shall begin by pointing Out to your excellency, in reply to the
note I have paraphrased above, that the origin of the continual
discrepancies which, with respect to the difficulties between my
Government and the railway, have latterly arisen between our
Governments, is to be found in the fact that there unfortunately
exist two different ways of viewing this question: The opinion of
the Government of the United States which, contrary to the doctrine
accepted by that Government itself in other cases and always
maintained by international law, wishes to intervene diplomatically
in a matter in which such a course is not admissible; and the
opinion of the Government of Ecuador which, in accordance with
international law and in harmony with its prescriptions, accepts
diplomatic intervention only in cases of a refusal of justice.
The position of the Government of Ecuador has not been controverted
with reasons by your excellency’s Government, but with acts, such as
your excellency’s notes which gave occasion for those from this
Ministry, numbers 192 of June 22, 1914,4 92 of May 14 of the present year,9 93 of the same date,10 and the present one.
As long as the intervention of your excellency’s Government is not
circumscribed by the limits which international law establishes, my
Government can not regard it as legitimate, nor can it believe that
its differences with the Guayaquil & Quito Railway Company are
differences with the Government of the United States, with which,
during a century of independent life, Ecuador has proceeded, as it
wishes to always, in the most perfect harmony. Never, in so
prolonged a space, of time, has the Government of the great nation
of Washington, of Hancock and of Lincoln had occasion for any
disagreement with Ecuador. If we except the Santos claim, a small
matter rapidly settled
[Page 366]
by
arbitration, the United States has never had anything to demand of
this honest and respectful but self-possessed and respectable people
called the Republic of Ecuador. It has been reserved to the
Guayaquil & Quito Railway Company, which daily receives so many
benefits from the country which it endeavors to involve in
diplomatic difficulties, to make an attempt against that tradition
of friendship carefully maintained by our Governments.
In consequence I inform your excellency that my Government can not
admit that your excellency’s Government has the right to protest
against an act of the Congress of Ecuador which only affects the
Guayaquil & Quito Railway Company and can not be a matter for
diplomatic action, since it neither is nor implies a refusal of
justice.
And so much the less right can I recognize in your excellency’s
Government to protest against the resolution of the Ecuadorian
Congress, which is based on the lapse of the arbitration agreed upon
between our Government and the Guayaquil & Quito Railway
Company, since said lapse has been tacitly declared by your
excellency’s Government in the note No. 18 which the Secretary of
State of the United States addressed to our Minister in Washington
under date of May 12, 1915. The Government of your excellency and
the Congress of Ecuador have therefore concurred on this point; and
your excellency may consequently form an idea of the magnitude of
our surprise at a protest from the representative of the Government
of the United States against what may be said, as far as the grounds
therefor are concerned, to be nothing more than the corroboration of
the respected opinion of that Government itself. Only, from that
point of coincidence, two diverse deductions have emanated:
- (a)
- that of your excellency’s Government which seems to
incline towards the idea that the arrangement between the
Government of Ecuador and the Guayaquil & Quito Railway
Company should be effected by diplomatic action; and
- (b)
- that of the Congress of Ecuador, which resolves to
facilitate said arrangement by judicial action without
prejudice to some new possible combination.
The pertinent part of the note of the Secretary of State of the
United States to which I refer is in answer to a suggestion made by
our representative in Washington, precisely in the effort to seek
possible means of a solution. It reads thus:—
Your suggestion with reference to the provisions in the
contract between your Government and the Company for the
arbitration of the matter in dispute loses force by reason
of the circumstance that attempts at arbitration twice
arranged by this Department have in each instance failed;
and, referring especially to your note of March 13, 1915,
the Department, after mature deliberation, has concluded
that it is amply justified in taking up, diplomatically, the
present status of the relations of the Government of Ecuador
and the Railway Company, and accordingly has instructed the
American Minister at Quito to make various inquiries of the
Government of Ecuador with respect to its attitude towards
the Company, as you were informed upon your visits to the
Department on May 6 and 7.
If the Government of your excellency supposes itself authorized by
the lapse of the arbitration to employ diplomatic action, which
sometimes signifies the use of force, to settle with my Government
the differences it has with the Guayaquil & Quito Railway
Company, how can it be surprised that the Congress of Ecuador wishes
to employ the legal course, that of justice, before its own very
respectable tribunals?
Counting upon the benevolence of the Government of the United States,
my Government could find in the present an opportunity to ask it
respectfully the course it would adopt, if it were in our place, so
that, in view of the two failures suffered by the arbitration, of
which my Government can not be justly accused, an end might be put
to a situation the juridical status of which is immensely
prejudicial to Ecuador, because it signifies the permanence of the
system of operation of the railway which, according to the
well-known phrase of the “Financial Times,” beats the world record
in the matter of losses and bad administration.
What has been resolved on by our Congress is but a movement of the
instinct of national preservation in view of the railway problem,
which is the evil that most largely contributes, not only to the
unprecedented financial crisis we suffer from in spite of the
surplus of our production over out consumption, but also, what is
still worse, to nip in the bud every effort to stimulate progress
and well-being dependent on financial operations which might have
been effected in the United States.
The Congress of Ecuador has therefore been wanting neither in
authority, justice nor moderation in the resolution which has given
occasion for your
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excellency’s protest, and which, furthermore, does not exclude the
possibility of a new transaction that may render judicial action
unnecessary.
Congress has neither thought to give offense to the Government of the
United States, nor to impair in any sense the harmony of its
traditional relations with our Government, because no one in Ecuador
confounds so respectable and eminent an entity with the Guayaquil
& Quito Railway Company; so that there can not be attributed to
the Ecuadorian Congress, without conspicuous injustice, purposes or
intentions that would be in direct opposition to the desire of all
Ecuadorians in the sense of preserving unalterable the relations of
friendship with the Government of the United States.
In judging therefore of the resolution of our Congress, I regret to
differ from the opinion of so well-balanced and justice-loving a
person as your excellency, from whose ideas I can only disassociate
myself in so exceptional a case as this, in which it is not possible
to judge isolatedly of certain acts that originate in a series of
complex antecedents which, in their turn, arise from substantial
discrepancies of opinion.
I improve [etc.]
