815.00/2215a: Telegram
The Acting Secretary of State to the Chargé in Honduras (Belden)
37. You are instructed to call upon the Minister for Foreign Affairs at the earliest opportunity and deliver to him in person the following note verbale:
“The Government of the United States has viewed with the deepest concern the recent revolutionary expeditions which have been organized along the boundaries of the Republics of Nicaragua and Honduras and of the Republics of Salvador and Honduras, and [Page 868] which have culminated in armed invasions of the territory of two of these nations by revolutionary forces concentrated on neighboring and friendly soil.
It is evident that the peace and prosperity of Central America are seriously imperiled by the recurrence of these revolutionary attempts, for no nation can proceed with the orderly administration of internal affairs when it is confronted with the ever-present menace of revolution at its frontiers, and the tremendous drain on the finances of a nation so threatened, caused by the necessity of mobilizing additional forces to guard its boundaries, makes it impossible for it to devote the necessary funds to essential internal expenditures.
The Government of the United States considers that the continued safety of the republican form of government in this continent, a form of government in the development of which every American nation has shared, requires each American Republic to assure itself that no revolutionary menace to the peace and security of a neighboring government is being organized within its borders. It therefore believes it to be its solemn duty to call to the attention of the Government of Honduras in the most earnest manner, what it had occasion recently clearly to proclaim, that it is convinced that it is the common obligation of all the American nations to enforce their neutrality laws with the utmost rigidity, to permit no revolutionary expeditions against other states to be fitted out within their territory, and to prohibit the exporting of munitions of war for the purpose of supplying revolutionists against neighboring governments.”
For your information. Identical instructions are being sent to the Legations at Managua and Salvador.
The Department desires you also to intimate discreetly and informally to the President of the Republic that the Government of the United States is of the opinion that all political difficulties must be solved without disorder and that it will not look with favor on any government in Central America which is not brought into power by constitutional methods, or [which is] retained in power by extra Constitutional methods.