837.00/3940
Memorandum of Telephone Conversation Between the Secretary of State and the Ambassador in Mexico (Daniels), September 9, 1933, 1 p.m.
Secretary: Good morning, Mr. Secretary.
Ambassador: How are you Mr. Secretary?
Secretary: It is good to hear your voice. What is going on?
Ambassador: They told me you called me last night.
Secretary: I called and then cancelled the call. I did not understand fully at the moment about the kind of recognition that Mexico was accustomed to extend to all countries situated like Cuba, but I learned what the Estrada doctrine is. I got on to it and then cancelled this call. I was out of touch with my real advisers like Wilson and Caffery for the moment.
Ambassador: That doctrine is that if their diplomatic representative remains, that is continuing the recognition.
Secretary: Exactly. What does the Mexican Foreign Office think about the attitude of the ABC countries?
Ambassador: They like it very much.
Secretary: Have they got replies yet from all three of them?
Ambassador: I do not know. I will find out and let you know.
Secretary: It will be interesting to have anything you get. There is no urgency. It can come by cable instead of telephoning.
Ambassador: I will find out right away and cable it.
Secretary: The Argentine sent something to us last night. I wanted to know what she sent to Mexico so as to know her attitude accurately. We are doing everything We can. You can tell our Mexican friends to encourage the Cubans to build up a government there that will preserve law and order and will be stable, and say that we are greatly appreciative about what the Mexican Government is doing on its own initiative.
[Page 413]Ambassador: Yes, I will gladly do that. They are very tense down here. They feel that if we intervene it will destroy the Montevideo conference.
Secretary: We are going to resort to everything possible to prevent intervention. The last thing on earth we want to do is intervene. That is why we want the Mexicans so much as good friends, on their own initiative, to get it to the Cubans that they must get together and form a stable government. We have very persistent reports that there are more or less communistic influences in there that are trying to keep anything from being done to restore order and that may be the chief trouble we have down there.
Ambassador: I talked with the Minister of Sweden yesterday. He knows two of those men now at the head and says they are high-class.
Secretary: Tell him it may not matter who is in charge any more than it did when the Céspedes government was in. The whole thing revolves around the army and you might have a commission made up of the finest men in the universe there and the army might go back on them within a split second. That is the key to our trouble and that is what we have to keep our eye on, as well as the personnel of the commission.
Ambassador: I see. Goodbye.