823.00 Revolutions/341: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Chargé in Peru (Burdett)
33. Your 101, July 11, 9 a.m. and 104, July 12, 4 p.m. Department assumes that your advice to Harris (your 101) was given informally and personally and that you made it plain to him that the responsibility for making a decision regarding the furnishing of planes and pilots and participation in domestic strife rests with the company or its representatives in Peru.
It is noted from your 104 that the Embassy has made a formal protest to the Minister for Foreign Affairs because of the fact that the plane was used in the zone of fire. The Department believes that any further representations which you may find it advisable to make should be informal in character and based on broad grounds of policy with particular reference to interference with carriage of mails rather than on any strictly legal grounds. In this connection please refer to Embassy’s despatch No. 976 of May 30, 1928,5 transmitting text of concession (which was subsequently transferred to the Peruvian Airways) which provides in Article 9 that in case of internal disorders the planes shall be placed at the disposal of the Government.
Department shares your view that it is highly inadvisable for Americans to take part in military operations and if they do so it is of course entirely at their own risk.
- Not printed; for related correspondence, see Foreign Relations, 1928, vol. i, pp. 800–805.↩