File No. 715.1715/42
The Honduran Minister ( Lopez Gutierrez) to the Secretary of State
Most Excellent Sir: I have before me your excellency’s kind note dated the 24th of this month in reply to that which I had the honor to send to you on the 10th of the same month.1
In your note above mentioned your excellency is pleased to say that your Government is always desirous of assisting in the most appropriate form in the maintenance of friendly relations between the sister Republics of this hemisphere, and adds that animated by that desire it spontaneously and gladly offers its good offices to those of Honduras and Nicaragua with a view to arriving at the earliest possible date, at the permanent agreement, satisfactory to both, of the question pending between them.
I wish to tender to your excellency my best thanks for your generous offer and the noble motives that prompted it. I shall transmit it to my Government by the next mail, and will inform you of the result.
In the meanwhile, I deem it expedient to inform the Department of State that if such a boundary dispute now exists it is not through the action of Honduras. As your excellency knows, the boundary dispute between the two countries was submitted to the decision of His Majesty the King of Spain, who rendered his award on the 26th day of December 1906.
The award was accepted by the Government of Honduras and by that of Nicaragua which was declared in a communication to its Congress, although under reserve of an explanation requested concerning points in the aforesaid award.
This is the present status of the case, and the friendly offers of your excellency’s Government contained in the note which I am now answering may prove of the highest importance for a final settlement of the matter under consideration.
I take [etc.]
- Neither printed.↩