File No. 817.812/151
The Secretary of State to the Minister of Colombia
Washington, April 11, 1916.
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your note of February 6, 1916, enclosing an English translation of the award rendered by the President of France on September 11, 1900, in the boundary controversy between the Republics of Colombia and Costa Rica, and a memorandum regarding the rights of dominion claimed by the Republic of Colombia “over the coast and archipelago of Mosquito.” You state that you have been instructed by your Government to remonstrate against the inclusion of the Great Corn and Little Corn Islands in any engagement already made, or hereafter to be made, by Nicaragua with the United States, and also to enter a like protest in regard to the occupation of the Mosquito coast by Nicaragua.
In reply I beg to say that the enclosures to your note under acknowledgment have been read with due care and that it would appear that the matter is one primarily for discussion between your Government and the Republic of Nicaragua.
Permit me to refer at this time to the concluding paragraphs of the memorandum enclosed with your note under acknowledgment, and to invite your attention to the statement contained in the note addressed by the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of France on October 22, 1900, in reply to a communication, dated September 22, 1900, from the Minister of Nicaragua at Paris to the effect that the arbitrator only had in mind, in referring to the Great Corn and Little Corn Islands, to establish that the territory of said Islands, mentioned in the treaty concluded March 30, 1865, between the Republics of Costa Rica and Colombia, was not included in the dominion of Costa Rica, and that the arbitrator did not undertake in any way to determine a question which was not before him.
Accept [etc.]