738.39/219: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Minister in Haiti ( Mayer )
78. On December 18 the President received the following telegram from the President of the Dominican Republic:
“I have the honor to state to Your Excellency that as the Haitian Government has had recourse to the Permanent Commission instituted by the Gondra Pact, in its duties of conciliation, for the settlement of the questions in connection with which it asked Your Excellency and Their Excellencies President Cardenas, of the United States of Mexico, and Laredo Bru of the Republic of Cuba, to exercise your good offices before my Government, there is now no absence of grounds for seeking the formula for friendly cooperation requested by His Excellency the President of Haiti. My Government will concur in the conciliation procedure initiated by Haiti, with the same desire it has always cherished of giving the Government and people of Haiti the most complete satisfaction with regard to any legitimate claim that they may present on the ground of the regrettable and regretted incidents that occurred in Dominican territory early in October. I can thus assure Your Excellency that my Government will not give the slightest ground for a disturbance of the peace of America, in the preservation of which all the peoples of [Page 141] the New World have so great a legitimate interest and which constitutes the lofty and noble concern of Your Excellency. Permit me therefore, Excellency, to express to you the satisfaction and the gratitude of my people, those of my Government, and those of myself personally, for the noble efforts made by Your Excellency and your Government to prevent the situation between the Dominican and Haitian Governments from being converted, because of the frontier incidents, into a factor capable of disturbing the peace of America. I am, etc.”
The President has this morning sent the following telegram in reply:
“I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of Your Excellency’s telegram advising me that inasmuch as the Haitian Government has had recourse to the peace procedure provided for in the Gondra Treaty of 1923 and in the Conciliation Convention of 1929 for the purpose of finding a peaceful solution of the controversy which unfortunately exists between Your Excellency’s Government and the Government of Haiti, the Government of the Dominican Republic will take part in the procedure invoked by the Government of Haiti.
Permit me further to express my gratification by reason of Your Excellency’s statement that the Government of the Dominican Republic will not give the slightest ground for a disturbance of the peace of America, in the preservation of which all the peoples of the New World have so great and legitimate an interest.
I extend to Your Excellency my most sincere wishes that the controversy which regrettably exists between two sister republics may obtain a rapid, just, and pacific solution through the utilization of the inter-American peace instruments to which they have now announced their determination to have recourse. I am, etc.”
You may desire at an appropriate opportunity to advise President Vincent of the texts of these two messages.