838.51/1865
The Secretary of State to the French Ambassador (Bérenger)
Excellency: I have the honor to refer to Your Excellency’s note of February 16, 1926, and to the several previous communications of your predecessor regarding the desire of your Government that the United States make representations to the Government of Haiti with a view to inducing the latter to agree to submit to arbitration the question whether the Haitian five percent loan of 1910 is payable in gold francs or in francs of current circulation.
I regret that it has not been possible for me sooner to communicate to you the decision of the Department in this matter. The delay has [Page 430] not been caused by any neglect of the requests of your Government. On the contrary, it has been due to my wish to have the question carefully reviewed from the beginning in a conscientious effort to find, if possible, a way to meet the views of the French Government, the frequency and insistency of whose communications on this subject to the Department of State have clearly indicated the importance attached by your Government to the present issue between the Bank of the Parisian Union and the Republic of Haiti.
As indicated in the correspondence which has been exchanged in this case, two principal questions have been under consideration, first, the fundamental question whether the 1910 loan is payable in francs of current circulation or on a gold basis, and, second, whether the Bank of the Parisian Union has the right under the loan contract to demand the arbitration of the first question.
The Department’s reexamination of these questions has now been concluded and I regret to state that the Department cannot modify the views expressed in its note of May 7, 1925,44 to the effect that in its opinion the position taken by the Haitian Government that the loan was payable at the current rate of the franc and not in gold was, in all the circumstances, a sound one.
The question of the applicability as between the Bank of the Parisian Union and the Haitian Government of the arbitration clause of the 1910 loan contract is one that the Department has reexamined with peculiar sympathy, not only because of the importance attached thereto by your Government, but also because of the traditional position of the Government of the United States in favor of arbitration wherever arbitration can properly be invoked. I am bound, however, to point out that in this matter the United States is not dealing with its own interests, but is only asked to give advice to the Government of Haiti; and that in these circumstances, the Department manifestly is confined to a consideration of the actual terms of the contract entered into by the Government of Haiti. A careful examination of the 1910 loan contract as a whole, and of the arbitration clause in particular, does not satisfy the Department that the Bank of the Parisian Union is entitled to invoke the arbitration provisions of the contract in respect of the subject matter of the present dispute. I am, therefore, constrained to state that this Government can not properly advise the Government of Haiti that it should agree to submit to arbitration the pending difference of opinion between that Government and the Bank of the Parisian Union on the question whether the 1910 loan is payable in francs of current circulation or in francs valued on a gold basis.
Accept [etc.]
- Foreign Relations, 1925, vol. ii, p. 810.↩