811.113 Senate Investigation/34

The Argentine Ambassador ( Espil ) to the Secretary of State 6

[Translation]

Mr. Secretary: The Committee of the United States Senate which is investigating at this time the sale of arms occupied itself at its meeting of the 5th day of the current month with examining, among other subjects, the activities of the Electric Boat Company in its endeavors, which failed to obtain in 1927 certain contracts for the construction of submarines for the Argentine Navy.7

My country’s Government and public opinion are following with full sympathy this salutary investigation, the results of which, it is to be hoped, will have great importance in the solution of the armaments problem.

For that very reason, it is deplorable that under cover of this investigation insinuations are ventured upon which are injurious to the good name of officials of a foreign country, when the said insinuations are not founded on even the most remote appearance of truth.

In saying this, I am referring to certain expressions of Senator Bone, one of the members of the Investigating Committee who, in the course of the hearing of the 5th instant, as it appears from the pertinent part of the stenographic report, which I am sending herewith, gratuitously and with evident levity, made some affirmations derogatory to the good name of one of the most highly esteemed chiefs of the Argentine Navy, namely, Admiral Ismael Galindez, who, in 1927, was Chairman of our Naval Commission in Europe.8

Such affirmations could be treated with contempt, if they came from the ill-humor of one of the witnesses, whose hopes were deceived by [Page 429] the attitude of the incorruptible official, but they cannot be treated with silence, however unfounded they be, when made by one of the Senators on the Investigating Committee.

I thus feel, Mr. Secretary, that it is my duty to express, in the name of my Government, the most formal protest against the insinuations made by Senator Bone against an honorable and highly esteemed officer of the Argentine Navy.

I avail myself [etc.]

Felipe A. Espil
  1. The reply of September 15, 1934, by the Secretary of State was similar in substance to that transmitted to the Mexican Ambassador on September 17, 1934, p. 436.
  2. See Foreign Relations, 1927, vol. i, pp. 424 ff.
  3. See Munitions Industry: Hearings before the Special Committee Investigating the Munitions Industry, 73d Cong., 2d sess., on S. Res. 200 (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1934), pt. 1, pp. 189–191.