738.3915/231: Telegram

The Minister in the Dominican Republic (W. W. Russell) to the Secretary of State

39. Your instruction number 472, October 5. I have conferred with Commissioner Welles and he concurs in my views that frontier guard should not be re-established at the present time for the reason that it would mean equipment and maintenance of force of at least one hundred men and considerable additional expense to the provisional government and this expense is not advisable due to crisis in national finances. All friction on the frontier probably would be eliminated if some arrangement could be made for tracing the provisional boundary line as established by the United States in 1911 [1912?]75 as shown on a map prepared by second military information division War Department Washington 1907 and 1908. This provisional boundary line which was accepted by both countries exists only on the map and no one knows where it is on the ground.

Russell
  1. See Department’s telegram of Sept. 24, 1912, a p.m., Foreign Relations, 1912, p. 368.