838.51/2745: Telegram
The Minister in Haiti (Armour) to the Acting Secretary of State
[Received 12:34 p.m.]
129. My telegram No. 128, November 30, 10 a.m. I have just come from the President who read me a letter written to him by Barau on board the American Legion dated November 22 last. Barau states that on November 12 the Secretary of State asked him to come to his cabin and discussed with him the instructions received by the Haitian delegation as to the position they were to take at the Pan American Conference. Barau replied that he had been instructed to make every effort to secure the abolition of financial control. Mr. Hull asked him to prepare a memorandum for him as to the Haitian Government’s position on this point which was given to the Secretary of State on November 15. On November 22, the date of writing, the Secretary of State had again summoned Barau and stated that he had forwarded the memorandum to his Government for its information that “he (Secretary of State) was disposed to give full satisfaction to the Republic of Haiti and that he recognized that this control was unjust”.
The President pointed out that the telegram (quoted in my telegram 128) sent from Montevideo 8 days after the writing of the above letter referred to “an exchange of notes” and that he could only assume that the Secretary of State had made some written reply either to Barau’s memorandum of November 18 [15] or to some subsequent note embodying a more formal request.
The President confirmed what the Minister for Foreign Affairs told me last night, that the telegram having been received en clair he feared that its contents would be made public during the course of the day and for this reason he was virtually forced into publishing not only the telegram but his letter to President Roosevelt as well as his [Page 770] instructions to the Haitian delegation. I told him that I had communicated with my Government following my talk with Laleau last night and that I hoped to have some word during the course of the day; that if as I informed Laleau there had been a misunderstanding I felt that a very awkward situation to say the least might result through such publication. However, the President seemed to feel that his own position in the country as a result of the agitation carried on by his opponents against the accord had become sufficiently delicate to require immediate action on his part. I feel therefore that the documents in question will be made public by early afternoon.