File No. 837.51/266
The Minister in Cuba ( Gonzales ) to the Secretary of State
While having an audience with the President yesterday he showed me telegraphic communications with Doctor Patterson, now in [Page 304] Washington, concerning loan. He appeared annoyed and hurt at reported terms of Department for granting loan. He stated that as I knew he proposed asking Congress to authorize payment for losses in revolution under certain conditions after investigation and that he had advanced Cuba Railroad one million dollars “and might advance another and yet another,” but to now pay any amount out of hand as damages for losses would lay precedent for ruin of country in damages for recent, old, and future revolutions, moreover that the railroads as such, not including associated cane-growing interests, could not show total loss of property to be near two millions. He also thought Cuban engineers sufficiently capable and honest to see that advances made to railroads by Cuba were properly applied.