File No. 838.51/590
The Haitian Legation to the Department of State
It appears from a telegraphic despatch sent yesterday to the Legation by the Secretary of State for Foreign Relations of Haiti on the subject of the contemplated 30,000,000 dollar loan that the Financial [Page 804] Adviser of the Republic of Haiti declared that if the Haitian Government does not agree to sign a protocol setting the term of twenty years for the life of the Convention of September 16, 1915, he will suspend payment of salaries and other public disbursements as early as on March 1.
Two lines of thought are manifestly here confounded, for one question is that of a loan which the Government of the United States is helping with its good offices the Government of Haiti to negotiate, and the other is that of payments which the Receiver General must attend to under Article V of the said Convention.
Moreover, the Minister of Haiti having, on the 17th of February instant, imparted to the Department of State his Government’s objections to an immediate renewal of the Convention as a prerequisite of the loan, and the question not yet having been quite cleared up with the bankers concerned, the above-mentioned declaration cannot in any way be accounted for.
Washington , February 23, 1917.