File No. 812.00/15294.
Special Agent Carothers to the Secretary of State.
At the request of General Villa and Miguel Diaz Lombardo, please forward the following to General Roque González Garza, Mexico City.
The following is my reply to the note of President Wilson and will be delivered officially by Manuel Bonilla:
[Request to quote the note transmitted in the telegram next above.]
I have also and at the same time sent the following to Mr. Carranza:
General Venustiano Carranza.,
Vera Cruz.
In a note directed to the chiefs of the various factions and military forces now at war, President Wilson invites the revolutionary Constitutionalist groups to collaborate in reestablishing constitutional government and secure the rights of the people. In this note President Wilson says that if we do not succeed in effecting this union the American Government will be obliged “to lend its active moral support to some man or group of men … who can rally” a large part of the nation “to ignore … the warring factions”; and that if this method is not efficacious, the Government reserves to itself to take other means.
In our opinion the declaration involves two perils which would frustrate the aims of the Revolution and destroy our sovereignty: first, that the party of the Científlcos under some other name would return to power with American backing; second, that if the people should not follow this group, the American Government would have recourse to an armed intervention.
In the face of these two perils and without recognizing in the American Government any right to intervene in our affairs, we believe that we should seek the means whereby the Constitutionalist Party may reunite and reorganize, even at the expense of amour propre. We believe that this is made incumbent upon us by patriotism and the future welfare of the country. We therefore venture to propose to you that we take into consideration the aforesaid note of President Wilson; and that, if you are so disposed, you will kindly inform us to that effect for the purpose of discussing and agreeing upon the indispensable preliminaries for arriving at an agreement respecting the form and procedure for a reorganization of the national constitutional government.
We have written to the above effect to General Roque González Garza as Chief of the Conventionist Government; also to General Emiliano Zapata as Chief of the Army of the South.
In the hope that your decision will be inspired by a wish for the welfare of the country, we remain [etc.]
Francisco Villa.
Miguel Diaz Lombardo,
In charge of the Department of Foreign
Relations and Justice.
I suppose that you and General Zapata have answered in similar terms; but in case you have not, I beg of you to do so, as it will show our unity of aim and the desire of the Constitutionalist Party for union.
Kindly transmit this same message to General Zapata in my name.
Miguel Diaz Lombardo.
Aguascalientes, June 10,
1915.