File No. 838.51/520
The Minister of Haiti to the Secretary of State
Washington, June 26, 1916.
Mr. Secretary of State: I have had the honor to receive the note dated June 224 by which your excellency was pleased to inform me that, in accordance with Article 2 of the Convention of September 16, 1915, between the Government of Haiti and that of the United States, the President of the United States was pleased to designate Mr. A. J. Maumus of Louisiana as Receiver General and Mr. W. S. Matthews, of Mississippi, as Deputy Receiver General of the Customs of Haiti and that these nominations had been communicated to my Government through the American Legation at Port au Prince.
I was glad to hear also that the Department of State is considering with the greatest attention the question of selecting the Financial Adviser provided by the convention.
The Financial Adviser and the Receiver General may so be put in position soon to render the eminent services which my Government expects of them and which are demanded with extreme urgency by the economic condition more and more trying of the Republic of Haiti.
The Haitian Government has shown unquestionable evidence of its firm will to accomplish the required reforms, all the reforms without any exception whatever. All offices in the military service and many in the civil service have been abolished. Considerable reductions have been made in the appropriations. Those measures have thrown on their own resources numberless citizens who theretofore lived on the salary paid them by the Government. The Haitian Government in taking this new departure had relied to a certain extent on the industrial and agricultural works that were to be started in the country by American capital spurred on by the good offices which Article I of the convention puts upon the Government of the United States. But that financial aid has not been forthcoming and my Government was constrained to suspend its reforms, yielding to a natural feeling of justice and humanity, yielding also to the necessity of warding off pardonable disaffection among the Haitian people.
It is important to have it even now made clear to all that the Government of the United States did not intervene for the sole purpose of setting up a stable Government and guaranteeing public order but also for that of contributing by practical assistance to industrial and agricultural activities to a true economic transformation of the Haitian nation.
This transformation cannot be the work of a day; that is obvious; but the wretched condition of the most part of the Haitian community does not permit of further delay in beginning the work.
[Page 356]In imparting to your excellency the views of my Government, I beg you to bear in mind the great value it attaches to the good offices of the American Government from an economic and financial standpoint.
Be pleased [etc.]
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