838.51/2767
The President of Haiti (Vincent) to President Roosevelt
Mr. President: Following the signature of our agreement of August 7 last, it seemed to me to be opportune and I still think it useful to write to Your Excellency a special letter with respect to that significant event, the importance of which cannot be exaggerated in view of its significance and scope and also because of the hope it arouses and the promise which it implies, the fulfillment of which it is reasonable to expect in the near future.
It was, at the same time, an occasion—and I seize the opportunity with great pleasure—to render merited homage to the distinguished plenipotentiary of Your Excellency: It is, indeed, only justice, in view of the tact and the uprightness of Mr. Norman Armour, in view of all the qualities of the man which have so well served the diplomat during the delicate negotiations which ended in the result for which our two Governments may well congratulate themselves.
For its part the Haitian Government animated, as Your Excellency is well aware, by a sincere desire to maintain with the Government of the United States relations of peace and friendship based on equity, gave a most striking proof of its good will, of its loyalty, of its scrupulous respect for international engagements, of its firm resolve to execute them in good faith, not only those which it inherited from preceding governments but its own. This is the exact significance of the financial provisions of the agreement of August 7 which, although they are in conformity with the stipulations of the protocol of 1919 and of the loan contract of 1922, are, nevertheless, of a nature, as indeed were these previous engagements themselves, to infringe the essential attributes of the sovereignty of a friendly nation.
Is this disparagement of a member of the great Pan-American family, after all, really necessary?
It is now the glory of Your Excellency to have inaugurated in our hemisphere the highest policy which could be conceived and the most [Page 765] intelligent one to be put into effect by the Chief of the greatest and most powerful State of the Americas: A policy tending to create an atmosphere of solidarity and security as between the American peoples, to bring them together in grouping and conciliating their interests in such a manner as to make the ensemble of the American States a sort of international unit based on the political sovereignty of the nations and the precise realization of their responsibilities to each other.
What a splendid policy this new policy of good will is! After having contributed to the leveling of many difficulties and to the facilitating of the return of our principal public services, by assuring the complete liberation of our territory on October 1, 1934, it justifies our desire to resume our complete sovereignty as rapidly as possible.
Following and in consequence of the official acts which occurred in 1919 and 1922, our agreement of August 7 recognizes that what remains of the financial control, which the United States have exercised in our country, is based upon the guarantee of the interest and of the amortization of the loan of 1922.
The Republic of Haiti, in spite of the unprecedented crisis which still holds the world in its grip and from which it has suffered terribly, as have the other countries, not only has regularly met its engagements but has even paid several years of amortization in advance. It is, perhaps, the only country which has done this and such conduct with respect to the creditors proves that the latter need have no serious fear with regard to the perfect regularity of the service of the Haitian debt in the future.
The United States holds, under the Piatt Amendment, the right to intervene in Cuba, and despite the development of an evidently dangerous political situation in that interesting neighboring country,71 we remark that it is its view that the situation in Cuba is a Cuban problem the solution of which should only be found by means of Cuban methods. This fine and generous attitude of the Government of the United States has made the most favorable impression on the Haitian people, as well as on the other members of the Pan American Union, and it is profoundly instructive.
The Haitian Government has faithfully adhered to its program of freeing itself without any conflict with the United States from the exceptional regime established by the treaty of 1915 and the subsequent agreements. It is permissible for it to envisage and it hopes, with a legitimate conviction, that, on its side, the Government of the United States wishing to give a new proof of its desire henceforth to be a good neighbor of all the American States, will be able to renounce a useless financial control in Haiti by a spontaneous act which would [Page 766] be the most eloquent affirmation of a common will towards friendship, towards better understanding, towards inter-American economic cooperation and collaboration for the wellbeing respectively of the nations of the three Americas.
It is with this comforting hope, Mr. President, that I have the pleasure of renewing to Your Excellency the assurances of my strong and constant friendship.