838.51/948: Telegram
The Minister in Haiti (Bailly-Blanchard) to the Secretary of State
[Received August 21 (?)—10:50 a.m.]
53. Department’s August 12, 6 p.m. and August 12, 7 p.m., my 51, August 17, 6[4] p.m.15 In audience with the President this morning presented [proposals?]16 adding my readiness to take the action suggested by the Department of State if the Haitian Government, to show its desire to fully cooperate with the American Government, would immediately obligate itself to repeal the following laws passed in violation of the agreement of August 24, 1918: On ownership of real estate in Haiti by resident foreigners, returning sequestrated property to Germans, on pensions, on duty on motor vehicles, etc., on trade marks, on mines and mining concessions, on preparation of primary school teachers, on preparatory manual training schools, on railroads and tramways, on firearms and ammunition, on survey; and to enact the following laws: Putting in operation section 15 of the contract of the retrait and reaffirming the gourd[e] as the legal money of Haiti, providing for the leasing of state land on long delay terms, establishing the ten modifications in the charter of the Banque Nationale de la République d’Haiti, of approval of the transfer of the Banque Nationale de la République d’Haiti to [Page 777] the new Banque Nationale de la République d’Haiti, a Haitian corporation, and then take up the consideration of the budget.
The President stated that an extraordinary session of the Council of State had to be called for the purpose and he could not convoke it unless the members thereof were paid. To overcome this supposed difficulty in the exercise of the discretionary power, conferred upon me by the Department, I notified the President that the salaries of the Government would be paid for the month of July and 30 days granted for the carrying out of the program outlined above. He stated that immediately after the payment he would [convoke] the Council of State, his message to the Council of State on assembling to contain the list of laws to be repealed and enacted. I left with the definite understanding that the program would be carried out. Three quarters of an hour afterwards I received the visit of the Minister for Foreign Affairs who came in the name of the President to inform me that the Government officers could not accept the payment of salaries because of the attached conditions. This refusal by the President shows a deliberate intention on the part of the Haitian Government to persist in its disregard of the provisions of the convention and of the agreement. The Haitian Government is in consultation with the aggressively anti-American element and by means of propaganda is daily consolidating behind itself all that element throughout the country. …