File No. 319.1123L25/57
Minister Price to the Secretary of State
Panama, June 8, 1917.
Sir: I have the honor to request of the Department further instruction with reference to the presentation of claims against the Government of Panama, resulting from the riot in the city of Colon on April 2, 1915, and respecting which I acknowledge the receipt of instruction No. 378 of May 2, 1917.
Before complying with said instruction I deemed it well to confer with the military authorities of the Canal Zone, including Brigadier General E. H. Plummer, Commanding General, and Major H. A. White, Judge Advocate on his staff, who had supervision, as our representative, of the investigation and of the prosecution of Carlos Nuñez, incidental to the riot. Practically all of the evidence in the matter which is in the files of the Legation and of the Department consists of that taken by our authorities. We have never been furnished by the Panaman authorities with copies of their testimony. I understood that we had the agreement with them that they would do this and I was laboring under the impression that our military authorities, who took charge of the conduct of the investigation for us and of the trial of Nuñez, had been given copies. I found, however, they had not been. The record of this testimony is in the archives of the Superior or Criminal Court of Panama and consists of between three hundred and three hundred and fifty pages.* * * If the Department cares for it, I shall have to ask authority to employ outside clerical help in copying and translating it, as it would be impracticable to handle it in addition to the large amount of current work of the Legation.
Major White states to me that the Department in its instruction has quite fully and plainly summarized the testimony and stated the case notwithstanding the failure to have before it the testimony referred to above.
Both General Plummer and Major White coincide with me in the opinion that it will be much better to present at first our demand for indemnities in the total amount claimed, and to carry on negotiations on this basis, as far as it may seem wise and, to withhold, for the time being, any expression to the Panaman Government of our willingness to arbitrate the claims or to accept the sum of $6,500.00 in settlement, as I am instructed to do at the beginning of the negotiations in the concluding paragraph of instruction No. 378 * * * General Plummer desires to seek the Department’s consent through the War Department to reconsider the attitude taken in the next paragraph to the last of the instruction of refusal to present demands or Privates Klimp and Deloughery on the ground that they are not American citizens. He claims they had taken out their first or [Page 1164] declaration of intention papers and by reason of that fact and of their being enlisted in the military service of our Government that the claims should be prosecuted for them.
I, therefore, respectfully submit the foregoing for the consideration of the Department and shall await its further expression herein before filing a formal note with the Panama Foreign Office.
I have [etc.]