738.39/103: Telegram
The President of the Dominican Republic (Trujillo) to President Roosevelt
[Received 8:40 p.m.]
Great and Good Friend: It gives me very great pleasure to acknowledge to Your Excellency the receipt of the kind message in which you advise me that in accordance with the invitation given it by the Government of Haiti the United States Government is disposed to offer, together with the Governments of Cuba and Mexico, its good offices for the purpose of promoting a satisfactory settlement of the incident that occurred in the northern zone of the Dominican-Haitian frontier between nationals of the two countries. I hasten first of all to express to Your Excellency the deep satisfaction produced both to me and my Government by the noble interest which Your Excellency displays in the maintenance of continental harmony and peace, whereby your vigorous personality as a friend of peace presents itself once more to the admiration and respect of all of us, who are laboring on the continent with sincerity and true devotion for the union and good understanding of the American nations. [Page 137] I have the honor to inform Your Excellency that up to this time the Haitian Government has not given the Dominican Government any notification or indication enabling it to know in what the controversy consists that it has been necessary to cite to justify the request for good offices under the convention on that point signed at the Buenos Aires Conference for the Maintenance of Peace.2 As soon as the Dominican Government learns of the point which, according to the Haitian Government, is the subject of controversy in connection with the incident mentioned, the Dominican Government will hasten to define its line of action as to whether it accepts or whether mediation or good offices shall proceed. Respecting the noble spirit of pacifism that inspired the conventions signed by the nations of America at the recent Buenos Aires Conference, and still in agreement with the said conventions, which constitute the highest example of Pan American concord and solidarity, the Dominican Government will bear in mind the lofty purpose of those treaties and will subject its conduct at all times to the stipulations of the same.
I avail myself [etc.]
- See Department of State Conference Series No. 33: Report of the Delegation of the United States of America to the Inter-American Conference for the Maintenance of Peace, Buenos Aires, Argentina, December 1–23, 1936 (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1937), pp. 227, 228 (paragraph numbered 2).↩