Office of the Historian

838.51/3153: Telegram

The Minister in Haiti (Gordon) to the Secretary of State

Port-au-Prince, June 4, 1936—4 p.m.
[Received 8:35 p.m.]

27. My despatch 227 of May 1356 and telegram 25, May 25, 4 p.m. Foreign Minister asked me to call today. He said that the President had summoned him to Kenskoff early this morning and asked him to [Page 677] inform me that he (the President) had just received a letter from Blanchet stating that the latter had been asked to come to the Department and had been told by Assistant Secretary Welles that President Vincent (1) intended to submit the 1910 bond question to the Permanent Court; (2) was losing interest in securing an American market for Haitian coffee; (3) that there was a rumor in Port-au-Prince that the President proposed to declare a moratorium on the 1922 loan.57 Blanchet further reported Assistant Secretary Welles as saying that he regretted this very much especially in view of the high esteem in which President Vincent had been held in Washington and that instructions would shortly be sent me setting forth the Department’s views concerning these matters.

Foreign Minister said that the President was replying immediately to Blanchet. In refutation of point 1, he was sending Blanchet a copy of the telegram to Mayard enclosed in my despatch under reference. The Foreign Minister also referred to a written communication he sent Pixley yesterday (transmitted to de la Rue by this morning’s air mail) as further proof of the fact that Haitian Government had no present intention of submitting the 1910 controversy either to arbitration or the Permanent Court. In refutation of point 2, President Vincent referred Blanchet to direct correspondence the President is having with Mackey58 as evidence of his great and continuing interest in securing an American market for Haitian coffee. As to the third point the President is telling Blanchet that there is nothing in it.

Amplifying despatch by next air mail.

Gordon
  1. Not printed.↩
  2. See Foreign Relations, 1922, Vol. ii, pp. 472 ff.↩
  3. C. A. Mackey, President of the Coffee and Sugar Exchange of New York.↩