714.1515/928a: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Minister in Honduras (Summerlin)29
63. Your despatches 932 of August 19 and 936 of August 24.
Please inform the President of Honduras that this Government has given careful and sympathetic consideration to the note delivered to you on August 16 by the Minister for Foreign Affairs and to the Minister’s subsequent informal statement that the Honduran Government would be glad to give consideration to any further suggestions or proposals which this Government might wish to make. In view [Page 955] of this latter statement, you may inquire informally whether the Government of Honduras would be willing to modify its proposal that the Guatemala boundary question be submitted to arbitration by the President of the United States and propose instead that it be arbitrated by a jurist named by the President of the United States from among the United States Members of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, established by The Hague Convention of 1899. These members are Elihu Root, John Bassett Moore, Charles Evans Hughes and Newton D. Baker. If the Honduran Government wishes to make a proposal to this effect the Department would be willing to present it to the Government of Guatemala and subsequently to exercise its good offices, if desired, in an effort to find a formula for the arbitration which would meet the views of both parties.
The Senate has confirmed your appointment as Minister to Venezuela but the Department hopes that you will remain in Tegucigalpa for the present, in order to carry on the negotiations if they can be resumed with any prospect of success.
- Second and third paragraphs repeated to the Minister in Guatemala for his information only in telegram No. 52, of the same date (not printed).↩